Desertion Book

I'm not a fan. Not sure if it is the authors own story, if so it makes a little more sense, kind of...

I found it deliberately not helping the reader: Locations are not divulged until long into the stories, neither is the time period. The narrator shows up at the end of part one, but is suddenly no longer all-knowing, but a narrator full of maybes and unclear suggestions of how things might have happened, possibly. He turns out to be the narrator of most of the rest of the book.
But my biggest problem with this novel is the lack of action! Almost everything is told as mere 'descriptions of things that happened in the past' (all tell, no show!), and I like my books to have characters who act and make me want to know what happens after this... Even though the characters have acted, the narrative form of mere description makes me start googling the Battle of Omdurman, Abyssinia, Rimbaud (had no idea he was in Africa and running guns helping Ethiopia stay independant?!) and Ramses II aka Ozymandias.

The different parts of the book tell different stories of the title's desertion; being left by loved ones or leaving them. As a theme it is interesting to explore, but it didn't really work for me; I didn't really buy into the characters, and the colonial history being told simultaneously somehow seems like interspersed little lectures - possibly as it is not described in any detail, it is actually actively avoided. And that makes it detached to me. It's not an integral part of the story, more "and here's you little lecture on the colonisation of the mind that happens, when joining the diaspora in England".

The story didn't really work for me - but it did make me google quite a few very interesting things - and that's a tick for Tanzania in my reading Africa challenge, so there is that!