In The End, It Was All About Love

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

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The unnamed narrator shares so much of his biography with the author that it's impossible not to read this as memoir, although it's published as fiction. Either way, it's a frank confessional about the internal life of the son of British immigrants, who leaves his UK family & relocates to Berlin, where he does find the change of life he was looking for, but not the connection with others or himself.
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Bookwomble Exploring friendship, dating, loneliness, racism, sexuality, and how these intersect with the MC's low self-esteem and depression, and the beginning of positive change through therapy and reconnection with his dead father's family in Uganda.
The language is wonderful, and if sad and revealing, because of these qualities it's also human and humane, and that's where connection happens.My only complaint is that at 122 pages, this was too short. 1y

batsy This sounds great. I like his thoughts on football on twitter and he seems thoughtful; very different from the usual aggressively masculine, sexist stuff that passes off as analysis. 1y

Bookwomble @batsy It is great ,I really enjoyed reading it 😊 If interest in a subject can be measured in negative percentages, then I'd rate my interest in football as -99%, so sadly his earlier books are not for me, but it's no surprise to hear you say that Musa's commentary is a cut above the typical punditry. He talks about the team he plays with in the book, and the support they give each other is what he emphasises. He has a football podcast, too. 1y

batsy @Bookwomble Oh, that's so cool that he plays in a team and that he refers to it in the book. It definitely helps me understand the compassion with which he can talk about players, as more than commodities in the manner that most fans do. 1y

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Bookwomble

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

So this is the loneliness & Berlin is the best place to face it, as well as evade it. Because Berlin is essentially the end of the world at least as far as loneliness goes. This is the final stop on the train of solitude, the one where the conductor asks you all to change please, bitte aussteigen. There's nowhere you can go after this, nowhere more gentle, more brutal, no greater chaos, nowhere to be more gratefully anonymous. Thank God for Berlin

BarbaraBB Great quote. I guess the wall still stood there when this book was written 1y

Bookwomble @BarbaraBB Berlin is a character in this book, for sure, though it was written in 2021 and is about the modern post-unification city. I think it reasonable to say that the author/MC brought their loneliness with them. 1y

BarbaraBB Oow wow that makes it even more intriguing. And sad 1y

The_Book_Ninja I worked in Berlin in 1998. Can‘t remember exactly where. but it was an old bus terminal, (classic, brutal concrete construction if that‘s not too clichéd) and it was used as a market in the day and a rave venue at night. I wish I kept a diary (edited) 1y

Bookwomble @The_Book_Ninja I can't decide if that sounds exciting or bleak - or perhaps a bit of both 🤔 1y

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Bookwomble

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

"What happened to the winds that sent the slave ships?
Some of those gusts are proud that they filled those ancient sails.
You could hear them above Berlin on election night,
Hailing the arrival of the moonlight and far-right;
You could hear them whistling through the corridors
Of the Holocaust memorial, slapping its stone walls and floors,
Gasping applause."

The book opens with this powerful poem, "Righteous Migrants".

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