Baking Cakes in Kigali

by Gaile Parkin

Shortlisted for the 2010 McKitterick Prize

Angel Tungaraza has recently moved to Rwanda from her native Tanzania. With her husband Pius and the five orphaned children of their late son and daughter, she is hardly short of things to do. But she still finds time to pursue her passion: her small but increasingly successful business, baking individually designed cakes for the parties and celebrations of her neighbours and their friends.

As a businesswoman, Angel prides herself on behaving professionally at all times, even when faced by awkward situations, ethical dilemmas and her own undignified menopausal hot flashes. And if she is occasionally manipulative, it is only ever because fairness requires it. Or because people sometimes need a small push in the right direction. Or because it might just win her cakes an international reputation.

Entirely aware that many of the people around her have witnessed and survived horrors she can barely imagine, Angel also knows that their lives continue, that they still find reasons for joy and celebration. As her customers tell her their stories, she comes to realise how much each of them has to mourn as well as how much they have to celebrate. And, finally, she comes to accept how much that is true of her too...

• ISBN10: 0385343434
• ISBN13: 9780385343435
• Publish Date: 18 August 2009 (first published 1 January 2009)
• Publish Status: Remaindered
• Out of Print: 5 February 2015
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Delacorte Press
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 308
• Language: English

Reviews

[Heather]

Angel Tungaraza is from Tanzania, but she is living in Kigali Rwanda while her husband is teaching at a local university. They live with their five grandchildren in a compound that houses other expats working in Rwanda. Angel has started a cake making business. People come to her to order a cake for the happy moments in their lives and they confide their secrets to her.

There is not an overall plot to the book. People come to order a cake and we hear about their lives in post-genocide Rwanda. Some are survivors of the massacre. Others have family members in prison for participating in it. Some have come to help with the international reconstruction efforts (and to earn extra money for living in a "dangerous" area which confuses Angel who feels perfectly safe.)

This format allows discussion of the role of AIDS in central African society. Do you talk about it? If so, how? Do you acknowledge when people are sick and tell the truth about what they have?

How do you encourage women, expat and native Rwandan, to make more of their lives especially when there is so much misogyny? One of the first encounters is for a cake for a baby's birth. They wanted a boy but this daughter is cute so they named her Goodenough.

The compound security guard has impregnated two women. One has already given birth to a boy and the other is due soon. He's waiting to see who he will marry. If the other child is a girl he'll marry the woman who gave him a boy.

On the surface the encounters about baking a cake seem like a light story but each of the people reveal more about life after tragedy.

There is a sequel to this book which is told from the point of view of one of the grandchildren. I've put that on my TBR list.

[Eve1972]

I enjoyed this novel quite a lot, it really has a heart warming, feel good feeling to it, while still having a backdrop of tragedy. Earlier this year I watched the TV series No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency that was based on the books by the same name by Alexander McCall Smith and this novel is very much along the same lines. It is not really a novel that has a beginning, middle and end, but more a collection of vignettes that intertwine the characters and their lives. A good solid debut novel from this author that I look forward to hearing more from!