Susan Kiguli: A Wonderfully Great Writer

Ugandan writer and poet Susan Kiguli wrote a great anthology of poems  titled 'The African Saga'.
Published by Femrite (1998).

This great book of poems,  i hope will be required reading for Literature throughout Uganda schools soon (if it has not been already). The book resounds with such beauty, there is resonating truth, warmth and hushed drama in her many and varied poems.  Poems about love, the longings of men and women,  about war, about Amin and the struggle to understand who we are as Africans. Poems about just being African.   The African Saga should be on everyone's shelf  and desk. The book is preferably read while reclining with a cup of tea and a couple of samosas on a quiet evening.

What a refreshing array of poems from one of our very own and a  truly great writer. Susan Kiguli is refreshing in her writing and ability to communicate so well about the beauty and tears, the triumphs and the paradoxes associated with living in Africa.

Author Susan Kiguli; A Ugandan Great Writer

 Her book is available at Femrite Offices and in many bookshops in Uganda and can also be bought online at www.amazon.com.

Susan Kiguli is inspiring  the present and next generation of writers. 

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Needed; Book Readers and Publishers in Uganda

We attended a book fair  held on the 14th March 2014 at the Uganda Manufacturer's Association  Show Grounds in Lugogo, Kampala, Uganda.
The book fair was a quiet affair attended by not more than 200 people in the time I was there. The publishers who made their appearance included Moran Publishers, Fountain Publishers, Vision, Femrite and a lot of newer publishing groups like MK and Longhorn. The effort made was very commendable; by the organizers and the publishers who bought stalls. They deserve great thanks. The future of book publishing in Uganda looks bright but could be brighter. More numbers at the book fair would have made us more sure about that.

The Ugandan community needs more readers and more people who can share their resources by helping people and children especially to read. The city lacks libraries.  It is a glaring absence. The one or two public libraries available cannot even attempt to cater to the population of two million plus people in Kampala.   An organization called Children International Uganda is doing something extra for book reading and had a booth at the show. They have box libraries and support different people to host small reading groups mainly for children. It is a great idea that will hopefully expose more children ( and adults) to book reading beyond the curriculum textbooks and  will increase the book reading culture in Uganda. We need it, all societies need a book writing and book reading culture. We hope that at Noonya Books we will contribute to that movement; towards more reading and more reading material accessibility for our communities.

Best,

Noonya Books

Amit Majmudar; A Great Writer

The Book of the Season for me is ' Partitions' by Amit Majmudar.
 Published by Oneworld.   I read it last week and i am sharing it with whoever crosses my path.

Amit Majmudar Author

This great beautiful book looking at, not..viewing, no...sensing the great pain that wrapped the Greater India and Pakistan region during the splitting of the nations in 1947 is one of the finest books i have ever read. Mr Majmudar also shows the great,  usually overlooked men and women who inhabit even the darkest places, bringing healing.  It is a book of realities, stark horrible truths as well as hope.   I hope this writer wins whatever prizes are out there to be won. Even if he doesn't, he has still written one of the best books for me. His book joins my literary favorites.  It is a book that listens to the human heart, that points us to a path greater than our selfish ways.

After reading it i wanted to go learn new surgical skills to save more lives, start a blog to encourage the sad, do better. I wanted to tell the world that all persons are the same. The author made me remember the children's book that said; 
" Little One, people are the same; wherever they are, whatever they are all over the world".  Please go out and buy the book Partitions , read it and  live better.

Susan Howatch; Sins of the Fathers

Susan Howatch; A Noonya Books Recommended Author.


One of the best authors of modern fiction alive today, is Susan Howatch.   I first came across her books when i was around 14 and i read the Sins of the Fathers. I bought this book on a roadside verandah in Kampala in war torn Uganda in the eighties, at a time when road side vendors of books in Kampala were still allowed. Road side book vending in Kampala is history since the clean up of chaotic  Kampala in the recent Musisi -clean - up years.
Anyway I bought this fat novel and took it home. My long suffering mother provided the money to buy me the book on the spot. She always never hesitated to buy me any book i asked for. God bless her soul and richly reward her. Anyway, when i took the book home,  i could not put it down. For days on end i read and re-read it. It was a part of my accessories (together with Pride and Prejudice and How Green was my Valley).

The world of Paul Van Zale , a rich and powerful business man and how he moved from New York  to the marshes of the English countryside to involve his company into the cosmetics business and ended up involved in so much more.  How he met this lovely strong creative woman called Dinah. It talks about his life and the affairs of his very interesting family. (much more interesting than the Kardashians< sorry could not resist that!).   The scenes Howatch described in 'Sins of the Fathers' were so clear that i could smell the air in the flatlands, see the waving grasses, the greenhouse with perfumes that Dinah was making and experimenting with and stumble with her characters upon the croaking and loud toad choruses in the marshes. How Van Zale would feel as if he was whirring into a parallel world whenever he left New York to go to England and all that followed.

Howatch's books taught me so much about life and people and its varied experiences,  the difficult choices people have to make sometimes, the possible passions governing these decisions as well as the consequences, some stretching for several generations. With  touches of wistful romance, passion and  in her latter books, spirituality,  Howatch's writing is among the very best.
The old copy of the Sins of the Fathers that i had bought, had lost its last pages...  For years i looked for the end of that story and not a person i met in my limited school girl circles had read that book or could tell me the end.  I finally found the ending and read it years later.  By then i had read many more of her other well written stories.  Many books and years later, Susan Howatch continues to shine as a writer who describes and touches the very soul of human existence, albeit based in fiction.  She is a great writer who has contributed a lot to the writing of great life affirming stories.  Do yourself a favour, please find one of her many books ( e.g The Rich are Different, Penmarric, Cashelmara , Glittering Images) and read it.

People of the Book; Reading now at Noonya

Thanks for dropping in at noonyabooks blog. We have been reading a great book lately. The book is called " People of the Book" by Geraldine Brooks.

Geraldine Brooks is a great writer whom I have just recently discovered. Her book,  a fiction story about a young lady  who restores and studies ancient texts, an expert who is following the tracks of the Sarajevo Hagaddah was a great read and has made me think about many many things.  It combines both adventure, history and investigative writing and story telling
Geraldine Brooks  is Australian born and a Pulitzer Prize winning author as well. Our author of the month at noonyabooks.com in March 2012  and one of the best authors in recent times was from Australia too; maybe Australia is bringing more good stories to the market or just producing better authors, I dont know .

Something which the Ms Brooks may likely have known when she wrote but may not have fully realized is the impact that she and other  good writers have on many lives. . A great writer's gift or skill,  is that characters come to life before your very eyes and mind and  the questions they bring to the screen of your mind stay with you for a very long time. Right now, living in Uganda, I have feel i have visited post war Bosnia and have a tiny bit more understanding of the place and times. I value more, the archivists and restorers and the people who do it. My abhorrence for war is even stronger.

I can remember reading the war novel "The Passing Bells" by Philip Rock about a family and their trials and tribulations around the time of World War 1. Another book that struck my mind was How Green Was my Valley, a 1939 novel by Richard Llewellyn. I read these books more than fifteen years ago as a young undergraduate. In my mind, I still see the images the two writers described. I see the coal blackened faces in the once green Valley, I think about the carpenter who said he would never make coffins whenever i pass a coffin shop in my country Uganda where coffins are displayed on the roadside. From Llewellyns's book,  I took the lesson of the need for a quietness around areas of intimacy in the two loving people who never married because of the too early exposure of their afair to others.

When i think about war, i always remember the "Passing Bells" and the unlikely death of the nurse heroine who was the beloved of the main journalist protagonist.  I could still cry like I did then at the sadness of it all when i see the TV pictures in Egypt and  in modern Syria where children, nurses and mothers and fathers are dying,in war. Some books are just timeless.

From my reading of it, "The People of the Book" by Geraldine Brooks will probably be one of those classics twenty years from now. I hope as many people or more read it but should they not, the writer has still left an indelible mark on civilization as i know it and for that I the reader am grateful. Please go read that book or borrow it from a library.

Author Geraldine Brooks

 Visit her official website at  www.geraldinebrooks.com for more of her great books  and articles.
 I have to go see the Sarajevo Haggadah online now as well, lots to do.

Till then,

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Noonya Books

Move to A new Location

We are moving.
Thank you for visiting us, we are moving... on land but not online.
Our online location remains the same but we have moved to a new home(s).

Noonya Books has moved to new two smaller locations; one in Makerere University Medical Students Canteen Mulago (near the library) and another on Sir Apollo Kaggwa Road as you branch off to  Prime Medical Center. We will keep our interest in books, music and stationery but to this we will add healthy food and snacks and hope that you will come visit us at our new home (s).
The location in the Medical Students Canteen will feature ability to borrow our interesting books on loan and then return them at a very low cost. Please come buy, borrow and eat....
See you there.

Noonya Books

Uganda, Land of Musical Greats

Have been thinking lately about Ugandan musicians  and African musicians in general. I think Uganda is gifted greatly with poets and singers especially in the traditional language lineage.

I read a book recently entitled 'One Little Guitar, (Fountain Publishers )by Katherine Barrett-Gaines where she has collected the songs of Paulo Kafeero and tried to translate them into english. She has also tried to document Kafeero's life in art in Uganda and share some aspects of his life.  She has done a commendable and wonderful thing to record for us one of the greatest artistes of Uganda in recent times. Thank you Ms Barrett-Gaines.  Her book should be required reading in the study of  music in Uganda.

Paul Kafeero (1970-2007), Kadongo Kamu Artist, Uganda

Paulo Kafeero. One of Uganda's greatest artistes of all time. We dont know what the earlier artistes were like.  I am sure we had a great many excellent ones, you cannot listen to the luganda old tradition songs and children's songs and not recognize the wonder therein, someone composed those songs and they were sung through time at firesides and in times of joy and sadness. Most of them were passed on through oral history and from family to family.  We thank God for the recent development in that the recordings of our artistes' music can be done for now and for history.
Paulo Kafeero was one of the greatest. When you listen to Walumbe Zaaya  (Death the Great Kidnapper) and Omukazi Ammennya http://www.hipipo.com/radio/117/Prince-Paul-Job-Kafeero/Paul-Kafeero-Omukazi-Amenya (She is Burdening me to death)..my direct translations of the titles,  you cant but wonder. Listen to the music, rhythm and the poetry  and humor in Kafeero's songs, you will recognize his great art and if you can understand the language it will evenbe better, if you cant, his music is still good because music is a language spoken internationally. Thank God for such men and women in Uganda.   Uganda's other great music artistes in my book include. Take some to listen to their music Philly Bongoley Lutaaya (Diana, Born in Africa, Elly Wamala, Geoffrey Oryema, Jimmy Katumba, Judith Babirye, Alex Mukulu, Peterson Mutebi and the Tames and last but not least,  the Great Afrigo Band). If you paste the urls below in the search engines you may be able to listen to some of their music. (The links are not yet working in my browser!)

Philly Bongoley Lutaaya  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92OzxKg_Ubs&feature=fvwrel

 Elly Wamala (Peninah) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfYN_vmSOXc

Geoffrey Oryema (Land of Anaka) http://www.last.fm/music/Geoffrey+Oryema/_/Land+Of+Anaka
http://www.last.fm/music/Geoffrey+Oryema?v=enabled&utm_expid=64146835-2 

 Jimmy Katumba (Congratulations, Twalina Omukwano) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfhiqQI8Qc0

Judith Babirye (Ekitiibwa Kyo Mukama) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHQqsfWJDRo&list=PL34A85EC0AA591A0E&index=9&feature=plpp_video

Alex Mukulu (Bannakampala nga Boogera, Bukedde; Wounds of Africa) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHQqsfWJDRo&list=PL34A85EC0AA591A0E&index=9&feature=plpp_video, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUagWdXyhsc

 Peterson Mutebi (Bamulete)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrCeKLGWO6Y

 and of course the great Afrigo Band. ; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZDpFKq70Uo

Many of these great men and women are still living and should be celebrated by us all.

Let us celebrate our great Ugandan artistes by going out and buying an original CD or DVD of their music and listening to it. Buy the book about Paulo Kafeero by Barrett Gaines (published by Fountain Publishers)  at a bookshop near you. Happy Listening.
Till then,

from us at Noonya