March 29: We, The Kindling by Otoniya J. Okot Bitek

March 29, Saturday (online)12pm New York  |  5pm London |  8pm Kampala We will read We, the Kindling, the debut novel by acclaimed poet Otoniya J. Okot Bitek. We are very excited that author will join us at the book club and the conversation will be hosted by Bhakti Shringarpure. You can buy the book on the Penguin Books website here. About the bookAs this spare and luminous novel begins, we meet Miriam, Helen and Maggie—three friends who, years ago when they were school children, survived capture by the Lord's Resistance Army in northern Uganda. Now, as the women go about their new lives in the city, shopping, caring for their children, planning and thinking about what the future might hold, we come to understand how deeply their past haunts the present. In graceful yet unflinching prose, Otoniya Okot Bitek weaves vivid folk tales with taut realism, revealing flashes of life before the war that ravaged Uganda, unspooling the terrible events that led to abductions of childre