There is the ghost of the father, which becomes more pervasive as the narrator considers what it means to approach the age his father was when he died.

In the End it was all About Love by Musa Okwonga - Royal

Another provoking thoughts like "Berlin is not a bubble", "Berlin is not a grown-up city" are appreciated. But it’s also a mark of the heart-swelling intimacy Okwonga generates that, on finishing the book, I was left hoping he hadn’t had too rough a lockdown this past year. Sometimes brilliant footballers would come to trial but wouldn’t be invited to the squad because they aren’t gentle people. As a native Berliner, the overblown mythologising of the city as a living entity out to challlenge and transform you has always slightly annoyed me. The world needs to know about the racism in Berlin hidden behind the slogans like "In Berlin kannst du alles sein".I make it clear that any type of love is a welcome topic but when I ask what love is, my interviewees often shoot straight to romantic love. Dann war ich sicher, dass der Abbruch erfolgreich gewesen und ich in meinem Körper wieder allein war.

In The End, It Was All About Love - Musa Okwonga - Google Books

It is the work of stopping and listening and caring, and you make a note not to get distracted from it too often in future.The author is also bisexual, and this adds another layer to the narrative as the narrator also debates when to tell people about his bisexuality. If you had, you would have told them it was the place which taught you the extremes of joy and pain.

In the End, It Was All About Love by Musa Okwonga | Goodreads

But now, with each passing year, your identity is being divided up, with each element progressively more dangerous. The book is divided into small vignette style pieces, all focusing on a different section of the author’s life in Berlin and his past actions in London and Uganda. Those places, those bubbles, will not stop to think about what they did to you, that you were so traumatised that you had to flee at the earliest opportunity.

Coming up to the age at which his father died, the narrator is having something of a mid-life crisis, his career rewarding intellectually but not financially, failing to find love, and increasingly finding Berlin is not the refuge from racism he has hoped. Okwonga's way of writng about Berlin strikes me more as a universal migration experience, with all the fears and hopes that entails. We readers are already introduced to some of the themes: the author is nearing 41, the same age as his father when he died and the author has gone through a break up. The story then jumps forward and the new film “No One But My Man” is in the post-production stage and Ae-jeong is receiving deserved praise. This is one last throw of the dice to stop Ae-jeong and Dae-o from concluding their relationship but it’s obvious it isn’t going to work.

In The End, It Was All About Love - Musa Musa Okwonga - In The End, It Was All About Love - Musa

When that moment passes, you will be precisely one second older than your father was when he died, and you will have precisely no idea what to do next. If Berlin were your bubble then that would mean you were incurious about whatever happened in other parts of the world. Okwonga's words cut deep into the heart to leave an indelible mark that becomes part of the reader, shaking the soul. Their main issue is navigating a world where every person, every media outlet appears to be obsessed with romantic love.

Perhaps when ones survival, social standing and acceptance is predicated on coupling up, the obsession with romantic love is understandable. It isn’t a novel, though it does pursue a single character’s development to trace, in some measure, an arc of coming-to-terms. palomar" by italo calvino vibes, which I loved: this narrative description that presents us with a subtly different and mindful way of perceiving the events around us and our actions. The narrative itself, writing about the past in present tense second-person was a very good idea that makes reader's sharper feelings and stronger emotions.