Review by Barry Didcock As well as being a novelist, playwright and co-editor of The Penguin Book Of New Black Writing In Britain, Courttia Newland co-wrote two of the five films in Steve McQueen’s acclaimed Small Axe anthology, which delved deep into the history of the black British experience in the 1970s and 1980s. Anyone expecting more of the same in A River Called Time can forget it, however: sprawling, ambitious, often thought-provoking and just as often baffling, Newland’s latest novel is as hard to comprehend as it is to forget. It’s set, initially at least, in an alternate London called Dinium on a world called Geb. In a handy timeline, Newland runs through the main historical events in this alternate universe starting with key dates in Egyptian history (Kemetism, the revival of the ancient Egyptian religion, features large). Christ’s life is shortened by 10 years, and by 213 AD the Roman emperors are favouring religions based on Kemetian Cosmology. In 1434, a