This Kind of Trouble

Is time our master, or servant? As the misfortunes committed and suffered by Margaret and Benjamin’s ancestors take root at the centre of their lives, Tochi Eze’s novel asks us how much of our troubles are inherited and will consequently be passed down to our descendants. Dancing between timelines and characters, This Kind of Trouble plays in and out of the rhythmic contours of time, often wrestling with its very nature. Can memory, and in turn, time, be trusted? As Margaret battles with the ghosts of her ancestors, the reader is confronted by the question of how accurate memory is, and the torment of related open-ended questions. What happened? Did it happen? And is the present really affected by it?