Rising from the Flames

Spanning India, Kenya, Uganda, England, and Canada, Janika Oza’s debut novel, A History of Burning, charts the lives of ten characters across four generations of an Indo-Ugandan family. The first section, dated 1898 to 1958, opens with Pirbhai at age thirteen, an “oldest son, no longer a boy,” in the western Indian state of Gujarat. When his mother sends him out in search of work — the family have little to eat, and his middle sister is seriously ill — he is tricked into bondage by a merchant. Lured by a weighty coin pressed into his palm and the promise of employment, Pirbhai seals his fate by placing an inky thumbprint on a contract he cannot read. That same evening, he boards a dhow with other vulnerable boys and men, their destination unknown. After months at sea under terrible conditions, the boat docks at Mombasa, Kenya. There he learns he is to build a railway to Lake Victoria, in Uganda.