Skip to main content

Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi

Biography

Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi

Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi is a recipient of the Windham-Campbell Prize, and her first novel, KINTU, won the Kwani? Manuscript Project Prize in 2013 and was longlisted for the Etisalat Prize in 2014. Her story “Let’s Tell This Story Properly” was the global winner of the 2014 Commonwealth Short Story Prize. Jennifer lives in Manchester, UK with her husband and son.

Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi

Books by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi

by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi - Fiction, Women's Fiction

In her 13th year, Kirabo confronts a piercing question: Who is my mother? Kirabo has been raised by women in the small Ugandan village of Nattetta --- her grandmother, her best friend and her many aunts --- but the absence of her mother follows her like a shadow. Seeking answers from Nsuuta, the local witch, Kirabo learns about the woman who birthed her, who she discovers is alive but not ready to meet. Nsuuta also helps Kirabo understand the emergence of a mysterious second self, a headstrong and confusing force inside her --- this, says Nsuuta, is a streak of the “first woman”: an independent, original state that has been all but lost to women.