Dance of the Jakaranda is set in Kenya, in two distinct periods: just after the turn of the century during the construction of the railroad from Mombasa to a port on Lake Victoria, and in 1963 on the eve of Kenyan independence. It could certainly be described as a multigenerational family drama, though oddly the generation in the middle is mostly absent from the book. The book centers on Babu, a worker from Punjab who came to Kenya to work on the railroad, and on his grandson Rajan, a popular singer. Events that took place in Babu's young life have effects that only become clear 60 years later.
The role of race, particularly as it was used during British colonial rule to pit its subjects against one another, is a central theme. One of the things this book did really well was remind me of the way Empire created new and frequently shifting routes and lands. In this respect, it reminded me a bit of Amitav Ghosh's Ibis trilogy. While I was on some level aware of it, I remember those books – particularly Sea of Poppies – really driving home the realization that movement wasn't just two way: from and to Europe/the West/the center of colonial power. The Ibis books are set several decades before Dance of the Jakaranda, but the boat at the center of the book (the titular Ibis) is transporting laborers from India to Africa, and has crew members hailing from Baltimore to southeast Asia. The characters in Dance of the Jakaranda are living through the waning of the British Empire and the changing maps that resulted. Babu came to Kenya from Punjab but at the time of Kenyan independence he's stateless.
I'd read five other Kenyan novels before this one, but all my the same author*: Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (who actually blurbed this and is thanked in the acknowledgements). Two of the Ngũgĩ books I've read actually cover the same period (the eve of independence), but – the Ngũgĩ endorsement aside – Peter Kimani is from a different generation and it was good to read a different voice.
* This is true for me for a lot of countries: I've read 3 Turkish novels, all by Orhan Pamuk; 3 Salvadoran novels, all by Horacio Castellanos Moya; 3 Nigerian novels, all by Chinua Achebe; 3 Portuguese novels, all by José Saramago. There are some pairs too, but I won't list them. Anyway, it's hardly my top priority, but I do sometimes ask myself: should I be letting one author stand in for a nation?
