After studying law at university, Neema built a career in marketing, specialising in TV, digital and brand strategy for companies including the BBC. Before publication, Kololo Hill won The Literary Consultancy Pen Factor Live, was shortlisted for the Bath Novel Award and First Novel Prize and was longlisted for various other writing awards. Kololo Hill is inspired by their lives, as well as those who were expelled from Uganda by brutal ruler Idi Amin. Her grandparents left India for East Africa in the 1940s. The emotional complexity, changing social structure and the notion of uncertainty are what makes Kololo Hill a fascinating read, as the story will be imprinted on your mind for quite a long time.Neema Shah's novel Kololo Hill was chosen as a 2021 Pick for Foyles, The Daily Mail, The Irish Times and Cosmopolitan. The book revisits the similar kind of horrors portrayed in Hafsa Zayyan’s We Are All Birds of Uganda. The story will unfold in front of the reader like a vivid picture and one can easily experience the vividness of the landscapes described in the novel. The book does explore how events beyond our control can manipulate our closest bonds and the doubts that accompany us in difficult times. Neema Shah’s observational skills definitely make the story more enjoyable and vivid. Other than being a historical fiction, Kololo Hill gives a surprisingly fresh take on the exceptional hardships endured by a family that had to leave everything that they held dear. Now, coming to the storyline, it is quite an intriguing read as each page contains toiling details of the topsy-turvy situation that the characters had to go through emotionally. But Neema Shah does it in a fluid manner where she cruises along the lives of Pran, Jaya and Asha.

Marrying nostalgia with the ongoing plot is quite tough to pull off, especially in a novel that is based on history.

She finds determination to build her life in England by finding a job that makes her happy. However, as the chapters commence, Asha grows into an independent woman capable of making her own decisions despite being challenged by her husband to return to Uganda with him. On the other hand, Jaya’s daughter-in-law Asha’s perspective of the expulsion is quite naive. The strength shown by her after dealing with the death of her husband is commendable and makes the novel a much more gripping one. The character graph of the matriarch Jaya, who already bore the brunt of being an immigrant, had to lift up her carefully set up life and settle in England again. However, after reading the novel, one cannot stop pointing out how the typical submissive portrayal of an Indian woman at contemporary times was smashed by the author. The parallel ongoing stories of the central characters Asha, Jaya, Vijay and Pran has been well-put by the author.

Kololo hill by neema shah