Set in arid northern Kenya amid the political turmoil of the latter half of the twentieth century, this powerful first novel will evoke references to William Boyd and even to Graham Greene and Joseph Conrad. From the dramatic prologue in which Odidi Oganda is killed in a hail of bullets, to his sister Ajany’s investigation of his life and death, author Owuor shifts back and forth—from the Mau-Mau movement (in which Odidi and Ajany’s father, Nyipir, may have been complicit), to Kenya’s postindependence hopes and horrors, to the near-present, taking in along the way bloodshed, betrayal, and the critically tragic assassination of Tom Mboya in 1969, after which, we are told, Kenya’s official languages became English, Kiswahili, and Silence. The Oganda family’s relationship to the English colonialist Boltons, including sire Hugh, whose life had crossed Nyipir’s, is at the center of this compelling saga. When Hugh’s son Isaiah comes to Kenya to trace his father’s fate, the intersection of his activities with Ajany’s becomes the driving center of this important addition to the literature of contemporary Africa. --Mark Levine
“Go buy Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor’s
Dust. In this dazzling novel you will find the entirety of human experience—tearshed, bloodshed, lust, love—in staggering proportions . . . Although written by an East African,
Dust is not just for Afrophiles. It is for bibliophiles . . . Akai-ma ranks among the most inimitable female characters in modern literature.”
—Taiye Selasi, New York Times Book Review“An astonishing novel . . . Engrossing . . . Owuor demonstrates extraordinary talent and range in these pages . . . Here in this remarkable novel is a brave, healing voice.”
—Washington Post
“Inventive, even breathtaking . . .
Dust [is] the next step in what I anticipate to be a prodigious career.”
—NPR.org
“Brilliant . . . A chilling portrait of Kenya that’s brimming with pain and promise . . . Owuor is taking her place in Kenya’s long line of outstanding writers.”
—Essence magazine
“This stunning debut novel grabs the reader’s heart, refusing to let go . . . Owuor represents another shining talent among Africa’s young writers publishing in English. This searing novel, though informed by her Kenyan roots, should not be pigeonholed. These unforgettable characters and universal themes will speak to all readers who seek truth and beauty in their literature.”
—Library Journal (starred)“There is hardly any aspect of Kenya that Owuor seems unable to tackle with her unique flair in this masterfully executed novel, from the mid–20th century’s Mau Mau rebellion and its aftermath to the stirring personal destinies of her sundry cast of characters . . . Her writing is exceptionally chiseled.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred, boxed)
“This powerful first novel will evoke references to William Boyd and even to Graham Greene and Joseph Conrad . . . [An] important addition to the literature of contemporary Africa.”
—Booklist
“This is a big, big unforgettable book, full of love and full of pain. Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor’s prose can burn your skin off. Her narrative power tears through the landscapes of Kenya: life, cheap death, torture, love, friendship.
Dust is a most visceral, moving novel about a family caught up in the smelt of a Kenya roiling inside the lusts and violences of its adolescence, determined to move past it. Epic in scope,
Dust covers over sixty years of betrayals, love, mysterious caves, colonial brutalities, epic love, political betrayals. A crisis that brings the nation to the brink of self-destruction. You will meet a mother with an AK-47 you will never forget, a father shamed by a secret, betrayed by a nation. The varied landscapes of Kenya have never been more tenderly made alive. We gush and cry through the floods of rivers and rage that burst past civilities and boundaries; we melt at love that has to live with blood needlessly shed; we gasp at lives most unexpectedly saved. We can carry all of this unbearable world, Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor proposes, because it is beautiful. This is the novel my twenty-first century has been waiting for, for our world in these seismic times.”
—Binyavanga Wainaina, author of One Day I Will Write About This Place
“The prose has an appealingly rough-hewn poetry, built on clipped sentences and brush-stroke evocations of the dry landscape . . . Owuor has style to spare.”
—Kirkus Reviews