Four branches of the Kintu clan are each given a book around a major character. It bounces back and forth in time from the 1970s to the 2000s, showing you the same cities and towns in different eras. It saves up any discussion of neo-colonialism until it is sure you've absorbed a lot of less familiar information. It saves up Idi Amin until you have read many other things you don't know about Uganda, but then really gives you the devastation of his downfall and the war in two major stories. Kintu then leapfrogs over the colonial era, to show how the curse has affected four modern Ugandan families.
It tells the story of how a curse is directed at all the descendants of Kintu Kidda. It is one of the surprisingly rare attempts in fiction to imagine an African culture undamaged by invasion. Its first hundred pages recreate the politics, family structures, conversations, and beliefs of the Buganda kingdom in the 1750s. Huge as in big-big time span, many characters. From Kintu, Book V, Misirayima (Miisi) Kintu "You must retrieve her and lay her properly." He looks at Miisi. 'This is Nnakato," the bee man points to the ground. Now they are standing at on the other end of the hill Miisi and the bee man have been taken together on the hillside for years now. "in every direction around this tree and build a dwelling." "It will make the central pole." Miisi is puzzled but the man adds, "Find a tall man, ask him to take ten strides,' the bee man takes a stride. "This tree will be at the centre," he says as he walks around it still looking it up and down. The bee man touches a tree and looks it up and down. The place is familiar even though Miisi is sure he has never been there. Miisi and the man are standing on a hillside. Miisi knows he should ask: who are you? Come with you where? But instead he whines, "You know my hip is bad" as if he and the man have known each other for a long time." He has a single hair on his head as thick as a big rope. Miisi feels imposed upon because he cannot see past the man. The roof and parts of the walls on the top floor are in disrepair. Miisi is sitting on a three-legged stool near the angel's trumpet shrub with his back against the hedge.
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