Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor Knihy

NAMED A REAL SIMPLE BOOK OF THE YEAR From the award-winning author of Dust comes a vibrant, stunning coming-of-age novel about a young woman struggling to find her place in a vast world--a poignant exploration of fate, mortality, love, and loss. On the island of Pate, off the coast of Kenya, lives solitary, stubborn Ayaana and her mother, Munira. When a sailor named Muhidin, also an outsider, enters their lives, Ayaana finds something she has never had before: a father. But as Ayaana grows into adulthood, forces of nature and history begin to reshape her life and the island itself--from a taciturn visitor with a murky past to a sanctuary-seeking religious extremist, from dragonflies to a tsunami, from black-clad kidnappers to cultural emissaries from China. Ayaana ends up embarking on a dramatic ship's journey to the Far East, where she will discover friends and enemies; be seduced by the charming but unreliable scion of a powerful Turkish business family; reclaim her devotion to the sea; and come to find her own tenuous place amid a landscape of beauty and violence and surprising joy. Told with a glorious lyricism and an unerring sense of compassion, The Dragonfly Sea is a transcendent story of adventure, fraught choices, and of the inexorable need for shelter in a dangerous world.

From a breathtaking new voice, winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing, a novel about a splintered family in Kenya and the struggling nation around it--a story of power and deceit and survival, grief and madness, unrequited love, sacrifice and perseverance. Odidi Oganda, running for his life, is gunned down in the streets of Nairobi. His grief-stricken sister, Ajany, just returned from Brazil, and their father bring his body back to their crumbling home deep in the Kenyan drylands, seeking some comfort and peace. But the murder has stirred memories long left untouched, and unleashed a series of unexpected events: Odidi and Ajany's mercurial mother flees in a fit of anguish and rage; a young Englishman arrives at the Ogandas' house, seeking his missing father; a hardened policeman who has borne witness to unspeakable acts reopens a cold case; and an all-seeing Trader with a murky identity plots an overdue revenge. In scenes stretching from the violent upheaval of contemporary Kenya, back through a shocking political assassination in 1969 and the Mau Mau uprisings against British colonial rule in the 1950s, we come to learn the secrets held by this parched landscape, buried deep within the shared past of the family and of a conflicted nation. Here is a spellbinding novel about a brother and sister who have lost their way; about how myths come to pass, history is written, and war stains us forever.

Kenia, 2007. Odidi Oganda, ein talentierter Student, wird in Nairobi erschossen. Seine Schwester Ajany kehrt aus Brasilien zurück, um mit ihrem Vater seinen Leichnam nach Hause zu bringen. Doch die Rückkehr auf die verfallene Farm im Norden des Landes bringt keinen Trost. Die Erinnerungen, die der Mord weckt, sind schmerzhaft und belasten die Familie: an die koloniale Gewaltherrschaft und die blutigen Konflikte nach der Unabhängigkeit. Ajanys Mutter flieht voller Wut und Trauer in die Wildnis, während ihr Vater sich einer brutalen Wahrheit stellen muss. In der tiefsten Verzweiflung entsteht jedoch auch etwas Neues: eine Liebe oder zumindest eine Verbindung. Diese Erzählung handelt von einer versehrten Familie und einem zerrissenen Land. Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor erzählt mit einer kraftvollen, intensiven Sprache eine Geschichte von universeller Dringlichkeit – von Macht und Täuschung, unerwiderter Liebe und dem unbedingten Willen zum Überleben. Ihr erster Roman wird als bedeutendes Werk der Weltliteratur gefeiert und bietet ein zeitgeschichtliches Panorama von intimer Intensität. Owuors außergewöhnliches Talent und ihr variierender Stil machen diesen Roman zu einer wichtigen Ergänzung der afrikanischen Gegenwartsliteratur.