Rose and the Burma Sky by Rosanna Amaka

One war, one soldier, one enduring love

1939: In a village in south-east Nigeria on the brink of the Second World War, young Obi watches from a mango tree as a colonial army jeep speeds by, filled with soldiers laughing and shouting, their buttons shining in the sun. To Obi, their promise of a smart uniform and regular wages is hard to resist, especially as he has his sweetheart Rose to impress and a family to support.

Years later, when Rose falls pregnant to another man, his heart is shattered. As the Burma Campaign mounts, and Obi is shipped out to fight, he is haunted by the mystery of Rose’s lover. When his identity comes to light, Obi’s devastation leads to a tragic chain of unexpected events.

In Rose and the Burma Sky, Rosanna Amaka weaves together the realities of war, the pain of first love and how following your heart might not always be the best course of action. Its gritty boy’s-eye view brings a spare and impassioned intensity, charging it with universal resonance and power.

Rose and the Burma Sky is one of the novels I picked up at last year’s Ilkley Literature Festival. I loved Rosanna Amaka’s reading, and found the inspiration behind the novel – a conversation with her grandmother about a war film in which all the soldiers were white – incredibly thought-provoking.

The main protagonist is Obi. We meet him as a child in the interwar years, and watch him grow into a young man, falling in love with his friend and neighbour, Rose, along the way. He doesn’t attempt to act upon those feelings until later in life, particularly as Rose gives no indication that she feels the same way. Obi is immediately a likeable character. He seems content to just “be”, taking a relatively simplistic and optimistic view of the world. I appreciated his contentment, even if he does come across as a little naïve and unquestioning of his circumstances.

As Rose makes it clear that she wants more from life than the village they grew up in and a continuation of their parents’ traditions, Obi joins the army. His intention is to impress her with the seriousness of the career, hoping that the muscles and discipline that come from the rigorous training (as well as the uniform!) might help his cause. It’s a choice made in a time of peace that will prove to have huge consequences as the Second World War begins and as Nigerian and African troops are called up, eventually taking Obi to Sierra Leone and Burma.

We only see Rose through Obi’s eyes, and I thought that Amaka did well to avoid portraying what could have been a one-sided, rose-tinted view of her. While Obi’s feelings never wane, we see her as she is – a beautiful, intelligent, and ambitious individual with aspirations that Obi doesn’t understand and can’t deliver. His desire for her becomes increasingly palpable, even as he tells her how she feels and she turns him down repeatedly, not even taking him seriously at first. I found her to be a little dismissive of Obi and his obvious feelings, although she stops short of being cruel to him. A shift occurs when she falls pregnant and Obi, always happy to help others, offers to marry her and claim the child as his own to save her reputation – something to which she reluctantly agrees.

Through the child that Obi takes on, Amaka adds an element of mystery to the novel. Rose refuses to say who the father is, leaving Obi to suspect all of those around them, and their childhood friends in particular. I’m not sure that this was the intention, but I found that Obi’s constant attempts to guess and get Rose to confess added an element of light-heartedness to the novel at the first, although it takes on a different note as the novel progresses. Obi does eventually discover the identity of the father, and I think at that point, he’d rather not have known. Ignorance is bliss, after all.

Throughout the novel, Amaka highlights the inequalities between those fighting in the War. Obi and his fellow countrymen were paid less than their white counterparts and held lower ranks irrespective of their competence. Even after the War ends, it takes Obi several months longer than necessary to get home from Burma, transport being prioritised for the white soldiers stationed there. I found it interesting that sparks of rebellion against the colonisation of their country become increasingly apparent following the War, partially stemming from the inequalities experienced there, although some – not Obi – were clearly having thoughts along those lines prior to the conflict.

Rose and the Burma Sky is an extremely enjoyable novel that has an intriguing mystery, a somewhat one-sided love story, and an exploration of the inequalities of the soldiers fighting in World War Two. It’s a novel that I highly recommend for those interested in the period, and particularly those looking for a different perspective to many novels set in this period.