Book review: Hold, by Michael Donkor

‘Post-colonial” always strikes me as a problematic term. It tethers things back rather than liberates. Musing on this novel having finished reading it, I found it strange that so many works by BAME writers – many of whom, like NoViolet Bulawayo and Taiye Selasi, I have lauded – involve an encounter with an estranging Occident. There are, of course, honourable exceptions; notably Chinua Achebe (referenced in this novel) and Ngugi wa Thiong’o.