Goodreads Monday is a weekly meme that was started by @Lauren’s Page Turners. This meme is quite easy to follow – just randomly pick a book from your to-be-read list and give the reasons why you want to read it. It is that simple.

This week’s book:

We Are All Birds of Uganda, Hafsa Zayyan

Blurb from Goodreads

‘You can’t stop birds from flying, can you, Sameer? They go where they will…’

1960s UGANDA. Hasan is struggling to run his family business following the sudden death of his wife. Just as he begins to see a way forward, a new regime seizes power, and a wave of rising prejudice threatens to sweep away everything he has built.

Present-day LONDON. Sameer, a young high-flying lawyer, senses an emptiness in what he thought was the life of his dreams. Called back to his family home by an unexpected tragedy, Sameer begins to find the missing pieces of himself not in his future plans, but in a past he never knew.

Moving between two continents and several generations over a troubled century, We Are All Birds of Uganda is a multi-layered, moving and immensely resonant novel of love, loss, and what it means to find home.

Why I Want To Read It

A new week has come. Happy Monday everyone! I hope you had or will have a great start to the week. My Monday had a quite tedious start. With statutory deadlines looming over the horizon, everyone is kicking into high gear. However, the pandemic and the recent surge in Manila is making it doubly hard to adjust to the “new normal”. The stifling heat is not helping either. Nevertheless, I am still quite enthusiastic that this pandemic and audit will both end soon. Crossing my fingers. Haha. How about you fellow readers? How was your Monday? I hope you are all safe.

Mondays also mean a Goodreads Monday update. For this month’s Goodreads Monday Updates, I have been featuring books written by African writers. I have also been immersing in African literature these past few weeks; my current read is Nobel Laureate in Literature Wole Soyinka’s Ake:The Years of Childhood. I also featured a Nigerian work last week’s update and I have just learned that Hafsa Zayyan has Nigerian blood. Nigerian writers have certainly gone a long way. Her debut novel, We are All Birds of Uganda first caught my attention for it was listed in several 2021 books to look forward to list. Moreover, I was fascinated by the idea of reading about Uganda, a country which I have yet to set foot in (at least in terms of literature).

One more thing piqued my interest, the shared similarities between the author and the novel’s primary protagonist. Having added it to my personal 2021 Top Books I Look Forward to list, I am crossing my fingers that I get to obtain a copy of the book soon. I now know that Zayyan has Nigerian blood but I am hoping she did Uganda’s history justice. I certainly can’t wait to dip my fingers into this debut work. How about you fellow reader, what book do you want to read? I hope you can share it in the comment box. For now, happy reading! Have a great week ahead!

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