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Dust
Kenya, 2007. Odidi Oganda, running for his life, is gunned down in the streets of Nairobi. His sister, Ajany, and their father bring his body back home, to a crumbling colonial house in northern Kenya. But the peace they seek is hard to find: the murder has stirred deeply buried memories of colonial violence, of the killing-sprees of the Mau Mau uprising, and the shocking political assassination
of Tom Mboya in 1969. When a young Englishman appears, searching for his missing father, another story, of love, or at least a connection, begins. This is a spellbinding state of the nation novel about Kenya, showing how the
violence of the past informs the violence and disorder of the present.
Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor’s memorable characters; Ajany’s mother, deranged with grief and past violations, the Trader, embodying the timeless nomadic traders of Sudan, and Odidi himself, who transcended his past, came to success, and then a tragic end, are enchanting. Owuor reveals to us a new Kenya, a Kenya of bloodshed but also of modernity, suffused with a spirit world only half-remembered. This is a country where the characters listen so acutely for what is not said, and for the voices from the distant and recent past.
of Tom Mboya in 1969. When a young Englishman appears, searching for his missing father, another story, of love, or at least a connection, begins. This is a spellbinding state of the nation novel about Kenya, showing how the
violence of the past informs the violence and disorder of the present.
Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor’s memorable characters; Ajany’s mother, deranged with grief and past violations, the Trader, embodying the timeless nomadic traders of Sudan, and Odidi himself, who transcended his past, came to success, and then a tragic end, are enchanting. Owuor reveals to us a new Kenya, a Kenya of bloodshed but also of modernity, suffused with a spirit world only half-remembered. This is a country where the characters listen so acutely for what is not said, and for the voices from the distant and recent past.
369 pages, Hardcover
First published June 5, 2013
251 people are currently reading
8284 people want to read
About the author
Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor
10 books247 followersYvonne Adhiambo Owuor (born 1968) is a Kenyan writer, who was named "Woman of the Year" by Eve Magazine in Kenya in 2004 for her contribution to the country's literature and arts. She won the 2003 Caine Prize for African Writing for her story "Weight of Whispers", which considers an aristocratic Rwandan refugee in Kenya. The story was originally published in Kwani?, the Kenyan literary magazine set up by Binyavanga Wainaina after he won the Caine Prize the previous year.
Born in Nairobi, Owuor studied English at Jomo Kenyatta University, before taking an MA in TV/Video development at Reading University. She has worked as a screenwriter and was the Executive Director of the Zanzibar International Film Festival from 2003 to 2005. Her short story "Weight of Whispers" was the 2003 winner of the Caine Prize. Her writing has appeared in numerous publications worldwide including Kwani? and McSweeney’s, and her story "The Knife Grinder’s Tale" was made into a short film in 2005.
In 2010, along with Binyavanga Wainaina, she participated in the Chinua Achebe Center's "Pilgrimages" project and travelled to Kinshasa, and intends to produce a book about her experiences.
In 2014, her novel "Dust" received widespread critical recommendations as a vivid and often poetic portrayal of the violent history of Kenya in the second half of the 20th century.'
(from Wikipedia)
Born in Nairobi, Owuor studied English at Jomo Kenyatta University, before taking an MA in TV/Video development at Reading University. She has worked as a screenwriter and was the Executive Director of the Zanzibar International Film Festival from 2003 to 2005. Her short story "Weight of Whispers" was the 2003 winner of the Caine Prize. Her writing has appeared in numerous publications worldwide including Kwani? and McSweeney’s, and her story "The Knife Grinder’s Tale" was made into a short film in 2005.
In 2010, along with Binyavanga Wainaina, she participated in the Chinua Achebe Center's "Pilgrimages" project and travelled to Kinshasa, and intends to produce a book about her experiences.
In 2014, her novel "Dust" received widespread critical recommendations as a vivid and often poetic portrayal of the violent history of Kenya in the second half of the 20th century.'
(from Wikipedia)
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April 13, 2014
This may be one of the most difficult books I've ever read and also, in the end, one of the most beautiful. It's human voice is so immense, so painful, so incredibly hard to listen to at times but so real.
I have never been to Kenya and am not likely to ever get to Africa at this point in my life (sadly) but I feel I have seen a glimpse of life that is not on tourists' maps but is of lives lived over the past 50 plus years as colonialism ended and Kenya has striven to become its own land. The costs of that past are seen in the present. Past and present are mixed throughout this novel, as are the outer physical world, the inner world and the spirit world.
The pivotal action, around which the novel swirls, is the death of Odidi Oganda, shot down in the streets of Nairobi. I am not giving away anything here. This is told on the flyleaf of the hardcover copy and in all summaries of the book. But the description that you will read is unlike what you will find in most novels...far more visceral, physical, present, and, yes, difficult. But shouldn't death be difficult to observe? Especially violent, seemingly senseless death.
Then people come together and apart...the family of Odidi, the police functionaries, the political system of Kenya, relatives of English colonials looking for pieces of the past. And the language is so often stunning.
He will forever remember the texture of the wind in
that moment, how it was a witness. He will remember how
he stopped breathing. He will remember the flavor of
sorrow blended with fear against the backdrop of pale
bonsai thornbushes, sand, a doum-palm tree, Bayonet aloes,
cacti, fleshy giant milkweed, myriad acacia sentinels
rooted in loam, sand, and lava. He will remember that the
singing bird stopped mid-reprise.
Incense drifting.
By the time he was touching the coffin, all color had
drained from his face. He knew better than to speak.
(p 63)
Life and death are mingled constantly. The lush plants side by side with the dried bones of the desert.
There is language native to Kenya also throughout the text, with and without translation. Some is song; some not.
There are also lies. So many lies. Personal, political, governmental, historical. And these form a backdrop for what happens in Dust. Until these lies, misunderstandings, half-truths are resolved, the story cannot end and the reader cannot understand anything.
Happily there is also love though it is hard to find and often a struggle to hold on to for any length of time.
In one affecting segment of the novel, Odidi's father Nyipir recalls the assassination of Tom Mboya in 1969 and the political upheaval and terror that followed.
After Mboya, Kenya's official languages: English,
Kiswahili, and Silence. There was also memory.
Nyipir's mind had collected phrases shouted out to
those who were within hearing range:
Tell my wife.
My brother.
Daughter.
Son.
My friend.
Someone.
Tell my people.
That I am here.
Tell them you saw me.
Because there was silence, he tried to memorize names,
never speaking them aloud. (p 273)
How to end this review when there is so much to say and also so little as the book really says it all. I will end with one more short quote from Owuor that seems to reflect the nature of the people and country she so obviously loves.
What endures? Echoes of footsteps leading out of a
cracking courtyard, and the sound a house makes when it
is falling down.
What endures?
Starting again.
(p 362
I have never been to Kenya and am not likely to ever get to Africa at this point in my life (sadly) but I feel I have seen a glimpse of life that is not on tourists' maps but is of lives lived over the past 50 plus years as colonialism ended and Kenya has striven to become its own land. The costs of that past are seen in the present. Past and present are mixed throughout this novel, as are the outer physical world, the inner world and the spirit world.
The pivotal action, around which the novel swirls, is the death of Odidi Oganda, shot down in the streets of Nairobi. I am not giving away anything here. This is told on the flyleaf of the hardcover copy and in all summaries of the book. But the description that you will read is unlike what you will find in most novels...far more visceral, physical, present, and, yes, difficult. But shouldn't death be difficult to observe? Especially violent, seemingly senseless death.
Then people come together and apart...the family of Odidi, the police functionaries, the political system of Kenya, relatives of English colonials looking for pieces of the past. And the language is so often stunning.
He will forever remember the texture of the wind in
that moment, how it was a witness. He will remember how
he stopped breathing. He will remember the flavor of
sorrow blended with fear against the backdrop of pale
bonsai thornbushes, sand, a doum-palm tree, Bayonet aloes,
cacti, fleshy giant milkweed, myriad acacia sentinels
rooted in loam, sand, and lava. He will remember that the
singing bird stopped mid-reprise.
Incense drifting.
By the time he was touching the coffin, all color had
drained from his face. He knew better than to speak.
(p 63)
Life and death are mingled constantly. The lush plants side by side with the dried bones of the desert.
There is language native to Kenya also throughout the text, with and without translation. Some is song; some not.
There are also lies. So many lies. Personal, political, governmental, historical. And these form a backdrop for what happens in Dust. Until these lies, misunderstandings, half-truths are resolved, the story cannot end and the reader cannot understand anything.
Happily there is also love though it is hard to find and often a struggle to hold on to for any length of time.
In one affecting segment of the novel, Odidi's father Nyipir recalls the assassination of Tom Mboya in 1969 and the political upheaval and terror that followed.
After Mboya, Kenya's official languages: English,
Kiswahili, and Silence. There was also memory.
Nyipir's mind had collected phrases shouted out to
those who were within hearing range:
Tell my wife.
My brother.
Daughter.
Son.
My friend.
Someone.
Tell my people.
That I am here.
Tell them you saw me.
Because there was silence, he tried to memorize names,
never speaking them aloud. (p 273)
How to end this review when there is so much to say and also so little as the book really says it all. I will end with one more short quote from Owuor that seems to reflect the nature of the people and country she so obviously loves.
What endures? Echoes of footsteps leading out of a
cracking courtyard, and the sound a house makes when it
is falling down.
What endures?
Starting again.
(p 362
February 8, 2014
This winter offers an unusually rich bounty of novels about Africa. “Radiance of Tomorrow,” Ishmael Beah’s gracious story of rebuilding a village in Sierra Leone, was just the beginning. Next week, Susan Minot will publish “Thirty Girls,” which is about a Ugandan teenager kidnapped by the Lord’s Resistance Army; next month, we’ll get Teju Cole’s “Every Day Is for the Thief,” which focuses on a Nigerian American who returns to Lagos. And now we have an astonishing novel from Kenyan writer Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor.
Tantalizing excerpts of “Dust” appeared earlier in a couple of literary journals, but few American readers have heard of this 45-year-old author before now. That must change. Owuor demonstrates extraordinary talent and range in these pages. Her style is alternately impressionistic and harsh, incantatory and propulsive. One moment, she keeps us trapped within the bloodied walls of a torture cell; in the next, her poetic voice soars over sun-baked plains. She can clear the gloom with passages of Dickensian comedy or tender romance, but most of her novel takes places in “haunted silences.” “Dust” moves between the lamentation of a single family and the corruption of national politics, swirling around one young man’s death to create a vortex of grief that draws in generations of deceit and Kenya’s tumultuous modern history.
The story opens in 2007 with a panicked chase through the streets of Nairobi: An athletic young man named Odidi hurls an AK-47 aside and runs from a howling mob. His anxious thoughts of escape mingle with snatches of memory and dialogue, a hallucinatory sequence of violent and comic moments that we won’t fully comprehend for more than 300 pages. Then suddenly the narrative shatters into short phrases:
“What’s happening to me?
“A voice says, ‘Close your eyes, boy. Go to sleep.’
“Odidi coughs three times.
“Red bubbles spatter.
“The voice says, ‘I’m here.’
“Odidi breathes in.
“Doesn’t breathe out.
“Becomes still.”
The rest of the novel records the shock waves from Odidi’s death that vibrate through his family, scrambling his mother’s sanity and dislodging long-concealed secrets. “Sorrow is a universe,” Owuor writes, and “Dust” is a sweeping exploration of that vast expanse of darkness. Odidi’s parents had invested all their hopes in their handsome only son, who dazzled his engineering professors and seemed destined for wealth and power in a country hurtling into the modern age. How all his talent and idealism came to seep out through bullet holes as he lay on a busy Nairobi street is only one of many mysteries explored in this engrossing story.
Odidi’s father — “old-world dapper in a slightly shabby 1970s coat and 1950s brown leather fedora” — never speaks of his early incarnations as a thief, gunrunner, rebel and patriot, but digging a grave for his son unearths a host of buried alliances and debts. And the novel’s plot turns on the coincidental arrival of a young Englishman seeking information about his own father, who once had great hopes for the British colony. These and other story lines involving corrupt officers, idealistic fighters, abandoned lovers and angry ghosts consort in a potent novel that frequently jumps into the past as Odidi’s coffin bakes in the sun.
His sister, Ajany, serves as the story’s moral core. An artist who had moved to Brazil, Ajany returns to help bury her brother but immediately feels disoriented by the political chaos that seems so disconnected from her own devastation. She has arrived “on a day when distorted election results will set a bucolic country afire,” Owuor writes. “The outside world is drenched with human noises of accusations and counteraccusations, election rigging, and the miracle of mathematical votes that multiply and divide themselves. But within their world, in a self-contained, haunted compound with its lone, misshapen grevillea tree, upon which a purple-blue bird tweets, and where death prowls at half past three, Ajany bends forward to listen to and for her brother, Odidi, whose story-words had created vessels that always carried her into safe border.”
She’s a bewitching character, hypersensitive to the colors and shapes around her but driven to distraction by her insatiable mourning. When her mother abandons the house and her father starts scratching the ground, Ajany strikes out for Nairobi in a desperate effort to investigate her brother’s murder. Answers won’t come easily. As the narrator notes, Kenya’s official languages are “English, Kiswahili, and Silence.”
Despite the beauty of Owuor’s writing and the emotional intensity of her story, the stylistic and narrative challenges of “Dust” will be compounded, for Americans, by the relative obscurity of Kenya’s political history. This is an exposition-free novel, and Owuor makes no concessions to any reader’s ignorance about her country’s violent upheavals in the 1950s, its transition from British rule in the early 1960s or its troubled election in 2007. (Quick: Who ran against incumbent president Mwai Kibaki?) These events — and fictional developments predicated on them — serve as the novel’s complicated backstory about a “national economy of secrets.”
But, of course, for anyone interested, the relevant information is easy to come by. And what’s more, Owuor has constructed a book that gradually teaches you how to read it. Let the sensuous language of “Dust” wash over you with the assurance that its fragmentary scenes and allusive references will be visited again and gradually brought into clearer focus. By the time beloved Odidi is finally laid to rest, so are several mysteries that his family has harbored for decades.
“What endures?” Ajany asks again and again in this story of fathomless loss. It’s a plaintive question, answered implicitly by recurrent references to dust, the finely ground remnants of earth and spirit, stone and bone. Ajany’s father knows that “the wound won’t close till its existence is spoken aloud, but not one person dares to.” Here in this remarkable novel is a brave, healing voice.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/enterta...
Tantalizing excerpts of “Dust” appeared earlier in a couple of literary journals, but few American readers have heard of this 45-year-old author before now. That must change. Owuor demonstrates extraordinary talent and range in these pages. Her style is alternately impressionistic and harsh, incantatory and propulsive. One moment, she keeps us trapped within the bloodied walls of a torture cell; in the next, her poetic voice soars over sun-baked plains. She can clear the gloom with passages of Dickensian comedy or tender romance, but most of her novel takes places in “haunted silences.” “Dust” moves between the lamentation of a single family and the corruption of national politics, swirling around one young man’s death to create a vortex of grief that draws in generations of deceit and Kenya’s tumultuous modern history.
The story opens in 2007 with a panicked chase through the streets of Nairobi: An athletic young man named Odidi hurls an AK-47 aside and runs from a howling mob. His anxious thoughts of escape mingle with snatches of memory and dialogue, a hallucinatory sequence of violent and comic moments that we won’t fully comprehend for more than 300 pages. Then suddenly the narrative shatters into short phrases:
“What’s happening to me?
“A voice says, ‘Close your eyes, boy. Go to sleep.’
“Odidi coughs three times.
“Red bubbles spatter.
“The voice says, ‘I’m here.’
“Odidi breathes in.
“Doesn’t breathe out.
“Becomes still.”
The rest of the novel records the shock waves from Odidi’s death that vibrate through his family, scrambling his mother’s sanity and dislodging long-concealed secrets. “Sorrow is a universe,” Owuor writes, and “Dust” is a sweeping exploration of that vast expanse of darkness. Odidi’s parents had invested all their hopes in their handsome only son, who dazzled his engineering professors and seemed destined for wealth and power in a country hurtling into the modern age. How all his talent and idealism came to seep out through bullet holes as he lay on a busy Nairobi street is only one of many mysteries explored in this engrossing story.
Odidi’s father — “old-world dapper in a slightly shabby 1970s coat and 1950s brown leather fedora” — never speaks of his early incarnations as a thief, gunrunner, rebel and patriot, but digging a grave for his son unearths a host of buried alliances and debts. And the novel’s plot turns on the coincidental arrival of a young Englishman seeking information about his own father, who once had great hopes for the British colony. These and other story lines involving corrupt officers, idealistic fighters, abandoned lovers and angry ghosts consort in a potent novel that frequently jumps into the past as Odidi’s coffin bakes in the sun.
His sister, Ajany, serves as the story’s moral core. An artist who had moved to Brazil, Ajany returns to help bury her brother but immediately feels disoriented by the political chaos that seems so disconnected from her own devastation. She has arrived “on a day when distorted election results will set a bucolic country afire,” Owuor writes. “The outside world is drenched with human noises of accusations and counteraccusations, election rigging, and the miracle of mathematical votes that multiply and divide themselves. But within their world, in a self-contained, haunted compound with its lone, misshapen grevillea tree, upon which a purple-blue bird tweets, and where death prowls at half past three, Ajany bends forward to listen to and for her brother, Odidi, whose story-words had created vessels that always carried her into safe border.”
She’s a bewitching character, hypersensitive to the colors and shapes around her but driven to distraction by her insatiable mourning. When her mother abandons the house and her father starts scratching the ground, Ajany strikes out for Nairobi in a desperate effort to investigate her brother’s murder. Answers won’t come easily. As the narrator notes, Kenya’s official languages are “English, Kiswahili, and Silence.”
Despite the beauty of Owuor’s writing and the emotional intensity of her story, the stylistic and narrative challenges of “Dust” will be compounded, for Americans, by the relative obscurity of Kenya’s political history. This is an exposition-free novel, and Owuor makes no concessions to any reader’s ignorance about her country’s violent upheavals in the 1950s, its transition from British rule in the early 1960s or its troubled election in 2007. (Quick: Who ran against incumbent president Mwai Kibaki?) These events — and fictional developments predicated on them — serve as the novel’s complicated backstory about a “national economy of secrets.”
But, of course, for anyone interested, the relevant information is easy to come by. And what’s more, Owuor has constructed a book that gradually teaches you how to read it. Let the sensuous language of “Dust” wash over you with the assurance that its fragmentary scenes and allusive references will be visited again and gradually brought into clearer focus. By the time beloved Odidi is finally laid to rest, so are several mysteries that his family has harbored for decades.
“What endures?” Ajany asks again and again in this story of fathomless loss. It’s a plaintive question, answered implicitly by recurrent references to dust, the finely ground remnants of earth and spirit, stone and bone. Ajany’s father knows that “the wound won’t close till its existence is spoken aloud, but not one person dares to.” Here in this remarkable novel is a brave, healing voice.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/enterta...
February 26, 2016
Dust opens with a shimmering vibrance that throws open the doors of perception, indeed unscrews them from their jambs. Odidi is running and remembering. He remembers through objects: the AK47 he throws away takes him back to a moment of transcendental communion through music and an occasion of buying a gift for 'his woman', whose name he cries out silently.
He discards the gun, he calls out love, returns to love. His gift is lingerie. What does it mean for two men to bond over the intimate feminine? The suggested sexuality, the proprietary 'his woman', the fingerprints of the male gaze, are wrapped up, folded out of sight, by music, by this nostalgic encounter
But now he cries out love, and the music, inaudible, has spoken to me, I will heed this voice asking for its rhythm to be noticed, for this is a poem in disguise. Why is this woman named Justina and not Justine? I feel it must be so Odidi can cry it out trisyllabic fortissimo Justiiinaaa! And find it mirrors his own name in the desperation: Odiiidiii! Break! Break! Break!
Odidi runs. Not in the progressive tense that conveys the immediate present, the hourglass' pinch of action, the tense we use on the telephone, the tense of excuse, the fixed plan 'I can't talk I'm running, no I'm washing my hair'. No. Odidi runs in the tense of habit, the tense of timeless truth, the tense of a state maintained. He is trapped in the poem: he will always be running. You can't live in the songs of people who don't know your name he remembers, like 'a brushstroke on his bare back' for the carnography, the body-story of Odidi is being painted. Owuor is marking her artistry.
Odidi, frozen in a history, a painting, sees his life flash before his eyes to the soundtrack of Fela Kuti. He remembers his little sister the way I remember my little brother (there's no sentimentality by the way. Owuor paints calmly, wreaking devastation in truth). There's only time for a glimpse, a waft, a squeeze of hands, and the scene ends, rises out of sight, to cast its fluttering shadow over that sister, Ajany, whose story this is really.
If this book is accurately described as a sustained poem of grief and anguish, its object is not only a loved person but surely a country, a hope, a generation of stolen people. If you aren't aware of Kenya's history, this is not the place for 101, but the country's pain is braided into that of Ajany and her family, and the mysteries that unravel around them have deep and widely spread political roots that become exposed in all their ugliness as hidden stories are scraped to the surface. One of these concerns a scam Odidi's company was involved in, narrated by his former colleague. I reacted in horror with Odidi and Ajany and Owuor, but the punishment we all receive for it is a heavy blow, and the narrative has to work hard to balance that dose of despair later.
Synthesising elements of raw history and mental (de)colonisation into a deeply personal story & a struggle that claims and insists on its specificity in the mode of extremely poetic prose reminded me of Leslie Marmon Silko's book Ceremony. The character of Galgalu, who often acts as a life saving suture in the Oganda family, personifies the novel's sensitivity to ritual, a vast, ponderous impulse towards healing that is nonetheless enacted or transacted through unceremonious gestures, such as Ajany giving Galgalu her necklace of amethyst. Another writer I was reminded of was Moniza Alvi, whose poetry about trauma and recovery contains the same depth of empathy and employs similar truncated, injured rhythms to embody its hurt subjects.
The front of my edition bears the comment: 'Owuor's prose is a physical expression of the landscape it evokes', which rather awkwardly suggests the relationship between text and place, the arid homeland sketched in chopped, grainy sentences, but her prose successfully embodies noisy silences, speech that conceals, and most interestingly to me, bodies themselves and the auras of disdain, envy, desire and fear that billow, shift and eventually fade around them, particularly Justina, for reasons I don't want to spoil. This delicate skill made me love the book more, as did Owuor's rejection of the easy inconclusive ending - another parallel with Ceremony - the subject is too acute to be refused resolution by lack of authorial courage or love.
He discards the gun, he calls out love, returns to love. His gift is lingerie. What does it mean for two men to bond over the intimate feminine? The suggested sexuality, the proprietary 'his woman', the fingerprints of the male gaze, are wrapped up, folded out of sight, by music, by this nostalgic encounter
But now he cries out love, and the music, inaudible, has spoken to me, I will heed this voice asking for its rhythm to be noticed, for this is a poem in disguise. Why is this woman named Justina and not Justine? I feel it must be so Odidi can cry it out trisyllabic fortissimo Justiiinaaa! And find it mirrors his own name in the desperation: Odiiidiii! Break! Break! Break!
Odidi runs. Not in the progressive tense that conveys the immediate present, the hourglass' pinch of action, the tense we use on the telephone, the tense of excuse, the fixed plan 'I can't talk I'm running, no I'm washing my hair'. No. Odidi runs in the tense of habit, the tense of timeless truth, the tense of a state maintained. He is trapped in the poem: he will always be running. You can't live in the songs of people who don't know your name he remembers, like 'a brushstroke on his bare back' for the carnography, the body-story of Odidi is being painted. Owuor is marking her artistry.
Odidi, frozen in a history, a painting, sees his life flash before his eyes to the soundtrack of Fela Kuti. He remembers his little sister the way I remember my little brother (there's no sentimentality by the way. Owuor paints calmly, wreaking devastation in truth). There's only time for a glimpse, a waft, a squeeze of hands, and the scene ends, rises out of sight, to cast its fluttering shadow over that sister, Ajany, whose story this is really.
If this book is accurately described as a sustained poem of grief and anguish, its object is not only a loved person but surely a country, a hope, a generation of stolen people. If you aren't aware of Kenya's history, this is not the place for 101, but the country's pain is braided into that of Ajany and her family, and the mysteries that unravel around them have deep and widely spread political roots that become exposed in all their ugliness as hidden stories are scraped to the surface. One of these concerns a scam Odidi's company was involved in, narrated by his former colleague. I reacted in horror with Odidi and Ajany and Owuor, but the punishment we all receive for it is a heavy blow, and the narrative has to work hard to balance that dose of despair later.
Synthesising elements of raw history and mental (de)colonisation into a deeply personal story & a struggle that claims and insists on its specificity in the mode of extremely poetic prose reminded me of Leslie Marmon Silko's book Ceremony. The character of Galgalu, who often acts as a life saving suture in the Oganda family, personifies the novel's sensitivity to ritual, a vast, ponderous impulse towards healing that is nonetheless enacted or transacted through unceremonious gestures, such as Ajany giving Galgalu her necklace of amethyst. Another writer I was reminded of was Moniza Alvi, whose poetry about trauma and recovery contains the same depth of empathy and employs similar truncated, injured rhythms to embody its hurt subjects.
The front of my edition bears the comment: 'Owuor's prose is a physical expression of the landscape it evokes', which rather awkwardly suggests the relationship between text and place, the arid homeland sketched in chopped, grainy sentences, but her prose successfully embodies noisy silences, speech that conceals, and most interestingly to me, bodies themselves and the auras of disdain, envy, desire and fear that billow, shift and eventually fade around them, particularly Justina, for reasons I don't want to spoil. This delicate skill made me love the book more, as did Owuor's rejection of the easy inconclusive ending - another parallel with Ceremony - the subject is too acute to be refused resolution by lack of authorial courage or love.
May 3, 2014
I think if I knew more about Kenya, I would've give this an additional star, so take that as a failure of the reader, not the writer. The novel seems to be jam-packed with the country's history, people, landscape and even perhaps mythology, all of it starting with the murder of a young man and ending with a slow reveal of multiple secrets. It is an absorbing immersion into the inner and outer lives of the characters and the country.
As one example of how much I don't know, I thought the reference to a teacher killed while defending a colleague who was chopped to pieces in front of their students was perhaps created by the author. When the man's name becomes important to one of the main characters, giving him a feeling of power as he resists swearing to "the oath," I thought perhaps the name itself meant something. I googled it and found that Aloys Kamau was a real man, that there's a book about him subtitled "Teacher and Martyr" by Giuseppe Mina, published by Paulines Publications Africa (a Catholic press), and that is all that's online.
The question of what endures and one of the answers being the land reminded me of Faulkner. The poetic style at times was reminiscent of Michael Ondaatje but ultimately it's its own, fitting the material, though the sometimes staccato style is not usually one of my favorites (perhaps another reason for my lack of a fifth star).
No real happiness exists for any of the characters, but there is bonding -- of former enemies, of family members, of lovers, of those who turn mythic.
With the theme of past violences -- tortures and mutilations, disappearances and erasures -- affecting the present (2006), I was reminded of Marra's A Constellation of Vital Phenomena. These authors have turned horrible themes into beautiful literature, but I'd have given up the pleasure of reading these works for there being no need for them.
As one example of how much I don't know, I thought the reference to a teacher killed while defending a colleague who was chopped to pieces in front of their students was perhaps created by the author. When the man's name becomes important to one of the main characters, giving him a feeling of power as he resists swearing to "the oath," I thought perhaps the name itself meant something. I googled it and found that Aloys Kamau was a real man, that there's a book about him subtitled "Teacher and Martyr" by Giuseppe Mina, published by Paulines Publications Africa (a Catholic press), and that is all that's online.
The question of what endures and one of the answers being the land reminded me of Faulkner. The poetic style at times was reminiscent of Michael Ondaatje but ultimately it's its own, fitting the material, though the sometimes staccato style is not usually one of my favorites (perhaps another reason for my lack of a fifth star).
No real happiness exists for any of the characters, but there is bonding -- of former enemies, of family members, of lovers, of those who turn mythic.
With the theme of past violences -- tortures and mutilations, disappearances and erasures -- affecting the present (2006), I was reminded of Marra's A Constellation of Vital Phenomena. These authors have turned horrible themes into beautiful literature, but I'd have given up the pleasure of reading these works for there being no need for them.
July 4, 2018
This left me breathless Holy Sh*t! I need to gather my thoughts but it was an amazing reading experience
In the past, I have struggled to connect with Kenyan Literature and it didn't help that my English teacher wasn't as enthusiastic about it either. Majority of the books I came across were predominately politically driven and that just didn't suite my contemporary taste. So I took upon myself to try out Dust by Yvonne Adhiambo crossing my fingers that this might be the book that finally reignites my interest in Kenyan Lit. I loved it!
Following The Oganda family after the son (Odidi) gets gun downed in the streets of Nairobi we see the reputation of this vile action through the family's grief & memories which opens the door to a dark past pelted with generational secrets that still haunt them in the present. At the same time, 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.
The lyrical poetic narrative style is so cinematic & intertwined with so much emotion that you will fill every character's pain, happiness, without being directly told. The first couple of pages might seem confusing but give it time to get used to the flow of the writing and you won't stop reading. The politics doesn't overpower the story but lingers in the background which balances the narrative, putting emphasis on the family saga. Lush description of the beautiful Kenyan Landscapes and the local street life are brought to life through the characters eyes, as well as the local slang and deep Kenyan proverbs make the experience feel authentic. It has its dark moments, you will weep at the author explores the injustices that take place through the hands of corrupt leaders and the poor state of living but you will also experience the local everyday life of a Kenyan, Using the public transport matatus, cuisine etc. I highly recommend you give it a try.
In the past, I have struggled to connect with Kenyan Literature and it didn't help that my English teacher wasn't as enthusiastic about it either. Majority of the books I came across were predominately politically driven and that just didn't suite my contemporary taste. So I took upon myself to try out Dust by Yvonne Adhiambo crossing my fingers that this might be the book that finally reignites my interest in Kenyan Lit. I loved it!
Following The Oganda family after the son (Odidi) gets gun downed in the streets of Nairobi we see the reputation of this vile action through the family's grief & memories which opens the door to a dark past pelted with generational secrets that still haunt them in the present. At the same time, 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.
The lyrical poetic narrative style is so cinematic & intertwined with so much emotion that you will fill every character's pain, happiness, without being directly told. The first couple of pages might seem confusing but give it time to get used to the flow of the writing and you won't stop reading. The politics doesn't overpower the story but lingers in the background which balances the narrative, putting emphasis on the family saga. Lush description of the beautiful Kenyan Landscapes and the local street life are brought to life through the characters eyes, as well as the local slang and deep Kenyan proverbs make the experience feel authentic. It has its dark moments, you will weep at the author explores the injustices that take place through the hands of corrupt leaders and the poor state of living but you will also experience the local everyday life of a Kenyan, Using the public transport matatus, cuisine etc. I highly recommend you give it a try.
July 31, 2017
Thanks to Awuor Onguru for recommending this lovely, dense novel! Author Adhiambo has one of the freshest new voices out there, weaving melancholy, history, and passion to examine a group of interconnected families during some of Kenya's most turbulent times.
Nota Bene: it took me a few pages to get used to Adhiambo's style. Yet it so perfectly captures the mood of the story and its characters that now I cannot imagine this drama conveyed in any other way.
The book also made me nostalgic for Kenya, a wonderful country where I had the honor to reside for a while. Definitely recommended!
Nota Bene: it took me a few pages to get used to Adhiambo's style. Yet it so perfectly captures the mood of the story and its characters that now I cannot imagine this drama conveyed in any other way.
The book also made me nostalgic for Kenya, a wonderful country where I had the honor to reside for a while. Definitely recommended!
March 22, 2018
Lyrical.. poetic.. melancholic.. in short, ALL. THE. FEELS. Dust is a poetic family saga entwined with Kenya’s post colonial history and the ways in which covered up history has continued to shape our national identity. What struck me the most was the use of beautiful language in the midst of so much ugliness. Owuor narrated events that will fill you with disgust and disenchantment, but somehow it was also interspersed with passages that brought peace, understanding, closure and hope - hope for the characters and hope for the nation . Dust is not for the timid/lazy reader. It’s a blend of poetry and fragmented sentences told in present and past. It certainly needs time and effort, but one that will richly reward you for sticking it out .
Often when we think of African literature the first thing that comes to mind are the West African powerhouses. And rightly so. They are hands down master storytellers. But this.. I feel Dust is right up to those standards, and dare I say higher. A worthy edition to any bookshelf .
Often when we think of African literature the first thing that comes to mind are the West African powerhouses. And rightly so. They are hands down master storytellers. But this.. I feel Dust is right up to those standards, and dare I say higher. A worthy edition to any bookshelf .
August 22, 2016
If books had a "reading difficulty" rating, this would get a solid 5/5.
The only other book I have ever stopped reading halfway was 50 Shades of Grey. 50 Shades of Grey was a terrible book. This one is not. Dust is not a bad book. It is just written in such a way that only a niche group of people would enjoy it. I happen to not exist in this subgroup of society that, apparently, have the mental agility of a rocket scientist poet. This book requires so much concentration and effort to keep up with that it felt like a chore reading it. That's never a good thing for me.
This is a very difficult book to review for me, partly because I couldn't finish it. To be honest, I'm ashamed that I couldn't finish it. Especially since the story was quite captivating. The reason I gave up reading this book was because it was so damn hard to read. Most of the negative reviews came from Yvonne's lack of translation of Swahili words. I'm Tanzanian so I understood all the Swahili in this novel. That wasn't my issue.
What drove me nuts was the way this book was written. Too much imagery and flowery language. I'm used to novels being a narrative experience. I love poetry, but when I'm reading a novel I'm not looking for poetry. I want a story told with a narrative style. Not EVERYTHING has to be described with a metaphor. Yet, everything that happens in this book is described with metaphors and poetic language that I started to wonder if all the characters were stoned throughout the story.
I never thought I'd say that about a book but seriously, this book had so much imagery that while the reader is drowning in an orgy of poetic descriptions and flowery language, you get lost completely and forget what is actually happening. There were many moments in this book when things would get really intense but the author would get lost in her poetic descriptions of the event that by the time you're done with the imagery, the intensity is lost when the reader returns to reality. Perfect example of this would be the prologue, it felt like Obidi had been running for hours and even his death was so prolonged with Yvonne's slow paced poetic writing style that I kept waiting for the guy to finally die so we can get on with the story.
The chronology of the story is difficult to follow. If you manage to read this book without double taking to see where and when the characters are, I commend your mental agility. You're a stronger person than I am, for sure. Yvonne would shift from past to present, to past to present, to different characters from past and present all in the span of one paragraph. Coupled with her metaphor intensive writing style, I was lost throughout my experience reading this book that by the time I reached page 137, I realized I had no freaking clue where the hell I was with the story.
Speaking of Obidi, I understand that his death is the beginning of the story. It all begins with his death. However, I found it difficult for me to grieve his loss when he is in, literally, every chapter that I managed to get through (and reintroduced so suddenly that at some point I thought he was a hallucination). If he's dead, let him stay dead. An occasional flashback is fine, but he was written into the story so often I almost forgot he was dead. Maybe it got better after page 137 but I wouldn't know and I honestly do not care to find out. I was on the brink of breaking a sweat trying to keep up with Yvonne. I was never ready for this book, and I don't think I ever will be. Too much. Asanteni.
I have to give this a 2/5
This book received so much critical praise. I understand some people would enjoy it. As I said, this book would appeal to a niche group of our population. It was, however, too difficult for me to read and follow.
The only other book I have ever stopped reading halfway was 50 Shades of Grey. 50 Shades of Grey was a terrible book. This one is not. Dust is not a bad book. It is just written in such a way that only a niche group of people would enjoy it. I happen to not exist in this subgroup of society that, apparently, have the mental agility of a rocket scientist poet. This book requires so much concentration and effort to keep up with that it felt like a chore reading it. That's never a good thing for me.
This is a very difficult book to review for me, partly because I couldn't finish it. To be honest, I'm ashamed that I couldn't finish it. Especially since the story was quite captivating. The reason I gave up reading this book was because it was so damn hard to read. Most of the negative reviews came from Yvonne's lack of translation of Swahili words. I'm Tanzanian so I understood all the Swahili in this novel. That wasn't my issue.
What drove me nuts was the way this book was written. Too much imagery and flowery language. I'm used to novels being a narrative experience. I love poetry, but when I'm reading a novel I'm not looking for poetry. I want a story told with a narrative style. Not EVERYTHING has to be described with a metaphor. Yet, everything that happens in this book is described with metaphors and poetic language that I started to wonder if all the characters were stoned throughout the story.
I never thought I'd say that about a book but seriously, this book had so much imagery that while the reader is drowning in an orgy of poetic descriptions and flowery language, you get lost completely and forget what is actually happening. There were many moments in this book when things would get really intense but the author would get lost in her poetic descriptions of the event that by the time you're done with the imagery, the intensity is lost when the reader returns to reality. Perfect example of this would be the prologue, it felt like Obidi had been running for hours and even his death was so prolonged with Yvonne's slow paced poetic writing style that I kept waiting for the guy to finally die so we can get on with the story.
The chronology of the story is difficult to follow. If you manage to read this book without double taking to see where and when the characters are, I commend your mental agility. You're a stronger person than I am, for sure. Yvonne would shift from past to present, to past to present, to different characters from past and present all in the span of one paragraph. Coupled with her metaphor intensive writing style, I was lost throughout my experience reading this book that by the time I reached page 137, I realized I had no freaking clue where the hell I was with the story.
Speaking of Obidi, I understand that his death is the beginning of the story. It all begins with his death. However, I found it difficult for me to grieve his loss when he is in, literally, every chapter that I managed to get through (and reintroduced so suddenly that at some point I thought he was a hallucination). If he's dead, let him stay dead. An occasional flashback is fine, but he was written into the story so often I almost forgot he was dead. Maybe it got better after page 137 but I wouldn't know and I honestly do not care to find out. I was on the brink of breaking a sweat trying to keep up with Yvonne. I was never ready for this book, and I don't think I ever will be. Too much. Asanteni.
I have to give this a 2/5
This book received so much critical praise. I understand some people would enjoy it. As I said, this book would appeal to a niche group of our population. It was, however, too difficult for me to read and follow.
August 2, 2014
This book was hard for me. I did not really like the writing style in many places. The NYTimes review said "Only the reader who truly loves books — books full to brimming with imagery — will appreciate the magic Owuor has made of the classic nation-at-war novel. With splintered lyricism, she tells the story of the Oganda family...Owuor’s prose is a physical expression of the landscape it evokes: raw, fragmented, dense, opaque." Much of it was too splintered and opaque for me. On the other hand, where it veered into a more traditional narrative, I liked it. I stuck it out because I was trying to stay out of my comfort zone and read something new, and I'm glad I finished it. (The second half was more narrative.)
June 27, 2014
This book is a hard read.
A slog even.
Because of the themes it deals with.
And the writing style.
Choppy
Fragmented in parts
There's a good story
But you will need patience.
And that's my attempt at recreating some of the prose in this book. The prologue is what really sets the stage for this story. A man is running, chased by a mob as we are treated to flashbacks from his life, it's fast paced and you can't help wanting to know: why was he killed? Who is he? And what led up to all this? After that I felt like the story kind of fell of a cliff................ Wheee!!
And it's because of the way it's written. Single words or very short sentences punctuated by periods. Beautiful descriptions of people and places but also hard to follow.Smoke and mirrors......eer Smoke and dust in this case may make for an added sense of mystery but it's also frustrating. I almost gave up! This is my main criticism of this book. Most of those who throw in the towel will do so in the first 3 or 4 chapters. A writer should be able to write as they please but they also have a job to do: draw the reader in, in the first few chapters. So they are invested for the long haul.
This book covers alot of ground from Colonial Kenya to the turbulent period surrounding the Dec 2007-early 2008 election period. Odidi, the running man is a main character, as is his family: sister Ajany, father Nyipir and mother Akai. It helps to be familiar with Kenyan history, if you aren't you might want to look up some things such as: the MauMau, the Emergency period, Historical figures both recent and old: Jomo Kenyatta, Pio Gama Pinto, Tom Mboya, Daniel Moi, Oginga Odinga, Raila Odinga, Mwai Kibaki etc. Owuor dredges up forgotten stories and buried memories, and she uses each of the characters to tell these stories. All this is set to the almost mystical backdrop of the Northern Kenya landscape. Coloured in vivid reds and oranges not just in words but literally, by Ajany who is quite the consummate artist. She comes home after a long absence and is confronted by the riddle of a brother who has been killed in mysterious circumstances. A heartbroken father and a mother who quite simply loses it. She walks through Nairobi and the arid landscapes around Wuoth Ogik where the family lives. There is alot of walking in this book ALOT! Another reviewer points this out and as I read through it's something that definitely stands out. Parts of Northern Kenya are very remote so it's no surprise, but still this a detail that stood out. The arrival of Isaiah Bolton from England seems to upend the lives of everyone in the Oganda family. He too is looking for answers. And for the next 400 or so pages, through Ajany and Isaiah's questions all that has been buried is dredged up and laid bare. The injustices, pain and trauma of the Colonial era. How people who might have lived as brothers betrayed each other for thirty pieces of silver, or something like that. The disenchantment that followed Independence in 1963. (Aside: Ngugi wa Thiong'o's book A Grain of Wheat revolves around some of this). The cancer of corruption that seems to grow, burrowing deep into every facet of society eventually suffocating lives. You will meet characters like the Trader, Ali Dida Hada and Petrus who have turned this into an art form. And the lies and secrets that parents keep from their children and that wives and husbands keep from each other. The middle part of the book was really enjoyable, the story flows well and layers are peeled away to reveal "buried truths". This is where Yvonne's skill as story teller really shines. (FYI some of the incidences described in the book such as the death of Eric Bower and Aloys Kamau really did happen). At times though there is too much melodrama just when you are really getting into the story. Everything builds up to a grand crescendo culminating in what feels like a final showdown at Wuoth Ogik. When you get to the end, go back and read the prologue, it will all make sense. The ending was bitter sweet but satisfying enough for me. Sometimes it's easy to figure out where the title of a book came from. With this one, there could be any number of answers. For me the answer came from a line on page 351(1st edition, Hardcover):
But then so many seasons after,when memory is dust, Ali came.But he could see nothing
History lives in the memories of those who lived it. Remembrances are fragile, they can easily be swept away, lost to the wind, just like dust. Overall, a well written, masterfully crafted story, 3.7 stars!
A slog even.
Because of the themes it deals with.
And the writing style.
Choppy
Fragmented in parts
There's a good story
But you will need patience.
And that's my attempt at recreating some of the prose in this book. The prologue is what really sets the stage for this story. A man is running, chased by a mob as we are treated to flashbacks from his life, it's fast paced and you can't help wanting to know: why was he killed? Who is he? And what led up to all this? After that I felt like the story kind of fell of a cliff................ Wheee!!
And it's because of the way it's written. Single words or very short sentences punctuated by periods. Beautiful descriptions of people and places but also hard to follow.
This book covers alot of ground from Colonial Kenya to the turbulent period surrounding the Dec 2007-early 2008 election period. Odidi, the running man is a main character, as is his family: sister Ajany, father Nyipir and mother Akai. It helps to be familiar with Kenyan history, if you aren't you might want to look up some things such as: the MauMau, the Emergency period, Historical figures both recent and old: Jomo Kenyatta, Pio Gama Pinto, Tom Mboya, Daniel Moi, Oginga Odinga, Raila Odinga, Mwai Kibaki etc. Owuor dredges up forgotten stories and buried memories, and she uses each of the characters to tell these stories. All this is set to the almost mystical backdrop of the Northern Kenya landscape. Coloured in vivid reds and oranges not just in words but literally, by Ajany who is quite the consummate artist. She comes home after a long absence and is confronted by the riddle of a brother who has been killed in mysterious circumstances. A heartbroken father and a mother who quite simply loses it. She walks through Nairobi and the arid landscapes around Wuoth Ogik where the family lives. There is alot of walking in this book ALOT! Another reviewer points this out and as I read through it's something that definitely stands out. Parts of Northern Kenya are very remote so it's no surprise, but still this a detail that stood out. The arrival of Isaiah Bolton from England seems to upend the lives of everyone in the Oganda family. He too is looking for answers. And for the next 400 or so pages, through Ajany and Isaiah's questions all that has been buried is dredged up and laid bare. The injustices, pain and trauma of the Colonial era. How people who might have lived as brothers betrayed each other for thirty pieces of silver, or something like that. The disenchantment that followed Independence in 1963. (Aside: Ngugi wa Thiong'o's book A Grain of Wheat revolves around some of this). The cancer of corruption that seems to grow, burrowing deep into every facet of society eventually suffocating lives. You will meet characters like the Trader, Ali Dida Hada and Petrus who have turned this into an art form. And the lies and secrets that parents keep from their children and that wives and husbands keep from each other. The middle part of the book was really enjoyable, the story flows well and layers are peeled away to reveal "buried truths". This is where Yvonne's skill as story teller really shines. (FYI some of the incidences described in the book such as the death of Eric Bower and Aloys Kamau really did happen). At times though there is too much melodrama just when you are really getting into the story. Everything builds up to a grand crescendo culminating in what feels like a final showdown at Wuoth Ogik. When you get to the end, go back and read the prologue, it will all make sense. The ending was bitter sweet but satisfying enough for me. Sometimes it's easy to figure out where the title of a book came from. With this one, there could be any number of answers. For me the answer came from a line on page 351(1st edition, Hardcover):
But then so many seasons after,when memory is dust, Ali came.But he could see nothing
History lives in the memories of those who lived it. Remembrances are fragile, they can easily be swept away, lost to the wind, just like dust. Overall, a well written, masterfully crafted story, 3.7 stars!
March 25, 2014
Sometimes you open a book and you know immediately whether the writing will grab you and the first sentences promise that the story will carry you to the last. That was the case for me when I opened
Dust
, Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor's outstanding debut novel. In it Owuor weaves a rich and colourful tapestry of a land, its people and its recent history. The novel is as much a portrait of one family and its members' struggles and challenges, as it is the story of the land and the country, Kenya, from the pre-independence conflicts to recent disturbances and efforts at reconciliation. Her protagonists live with and surrounded by stories - past and present, dormant, repressed or censored, but not forgotten and slowly revealed one at a time. "Kenya is just a story…"
At the most elemental level, as we learn quickly, this is a story of love and loss, of loyalty and betrayal, of bribes and coercion or even murder. Friends can turn into enemies; enemies can become friends or something close to it; revelations of old secrets can lead to healing of long festering wounds and, possibly, to redemption and hope.
The novel's Prologue opens with a dramatic event: a young man, Odidi Oganda, is on the run for his life, chased through the backstreets and alleyways of Nairobi. His mind clings to thoughts of his beloved sister, Ajany, and a sense of urgency for him to return home pushes him forward. Yet, bullets keep flying unrelentingly. Eventually, he collapses in the middle of the road and dies with his head cradled in the lap of a stranger - too late for him to save the young man's life. I marveled over the Prologue's language. It is breathtaking in its speed, yet also poetic, capturing the chase with short or incomplete sentences that convey the high level of tension and drama of the moment. Odidi is brought home by his father, Nyipir and his sister who, who at the urgent by her father, had returned from Brazil.
"[Nyipir] is flying home with his children.
Yet he is alone.
Memories are solitary ghosts.
He lets them in, traveling with them."
Home is in northern Kenya, a vast and remote region of the country. The landscape and in it the family's home are also characters in their own right. The house, built by a white settler during pre-independence, is slowly disintegrating; the walls are crumbling, mirroring the stages in the fragmentation of the family and break-up of the human connections that kept them together. Nyipir is a trader in cattle and other goods across the northern border. His absences force his wife to be in control and fight her own challenges and nurse her secrets. She is aloof at best, cold and uninterested in her daughter, suffering greatly when her son leaves for study and city life. Akai-ma disappears when her son is brought home. At about the same time a stranger, who had been invited by Odidi to visit, asks uncomfortable questions… What are the connections? Slowly, much of it told in flashbacks, we learn how to piece together the puzzle of the family members' backgrounds and some of the traumas they experienced. It makes for absorbing and deeply affecting reading. It is not too far-fetched to see in the family portrait a reflection and illustration of what many others went through during the tumultuous and sometimes violent periods of Kenya's recent history. The "solitary ghosts" of those past memories, many held deep inside, travel with the individuals and rob them of inner peace:
"But then came fear.
It split words into smaller and smaller fragments until words became secret, suffocating and silent."
Or, at another point in the narrative, the devastating recognition:
"Kenya's official languages: English, Kiswahili, and Silence".
Owuor confronts her characters, and the reader, with the recurring question – "What endures?" Different answers at different times wind through the novel like a leitmotiv. They each circle back to the fundamental premise that "memories are ghosts…" and that "to name something is to bring it to life" with the realization that the revelation can have unforeseen consequences. Throughout the novel Owuor touches on pivotal political events such as the ethnic strife during the 2007 election or, crucial for Nyipir's plight, the assassination of Thomas Mboya, a leading politician during the early days of Kenyan independence. However, her narrative always remains on the personal level and within the concrete story of the Oganda family and a few important connected characters, mysterious in their own right. DUST is an extraordinary achievement of a novel, even more so as a debut novel. The promise for a 'great read' that I felt when reading the Prologue was greatly surpassed during my reading this captivating and thought provoking story, exquisitely told. [Friederike Knabe]
At the most elemental level, as we learn quickly, this is a story of love and loss, of loyalty and betrayal, of bribes and coercion or even murder. Friends can turn into enemies; enemies can become friends or something close to it; revelations of old secrets can lead to healing of long festering wounds and, possibly, to redemption and hope.
The novel's Prologue opens with a dramatic event: a young man, Odidi Oganda, is on the run for his life, chased through the backstreets and alleyways of Nairobi. His mind clings to thoughts of his beloved sister, Ajany, and a sense of urgency for him to return home pushes him forward. Yet, bullets keep flying unrelentingly. Eventually, he collapses in the middle of the road and dies with his head cradled in the lap of a stranger - too late for him to save the young man's life. I marveled over the Prologue's language. It is breathtaking in its speed, yet also poetic, capturing the chase with short or incomplete sentences that convey the high level of tension and drama of the moment. Odidi is brought home by his father, Nyipir and his sister who, who at the urgent by her father, had returned from Brazil.
"[Nyipir] is flying home with his children.
Yet he is alone.
Memories are solitary ghosts.
He lets them in, traveling with them."
Home is in northern Kenya, a vast and remote region of the country. The landscape and in it the family's home are also characters in their own right. The house, built by a white settler during pre-independence, is slowly disintegrating; the walls are crumbling, mirroring the stages in the fragmentation of the family and break-up of the human connections that kept them together. Nyipir is a trader in cattle and other goods across the northern border. His absences force his wife to be in control and fight her own challenges and nurse her secrets. She is aloof at best, cold and uninterested in her daughter, suffering greatly when her son leaves for study and city life. Akai-ma disappears when her son is brought home. At about the same time a stranger, who had been invited by Odidi to visit, asks uncomfortable questions… What are the connections? Slowly, much of it told in flashbacks, we learn how to piece together the puzzle of the family members' backgrounds and some of the traumas they experienced. It makes for absorbing and deeply affecting reading. It is not too far-fetched to see in the family portrait a reflection and illustration of what many others went through during the tumultuous and sometimes violent periods of Kenya's recent history. The "solitary ghosts" of those past memories, many held deep inside, travel with the individuals and rob them of inner peace:
"But then came fear.
It split words into smaller and smaller fragments until words became secret, suffocating and silent."
Or, at another point in the narrative, the devastating recognition:
"Kenya's official languages: English, Kiswahili, and Silence".
Owuor confronts her characters, and the reader, with the recurring question – "What endures?" Different answers at different times wind through the novel like a leitmotiv. They each circle back to the fundamental premise that "memories are ghosts…" and that "to name something is to bring it to life" with the realization that the revelation can have unforeseen consequences. Throughout the novel Owuor touches on pivotal political events such as the ethnic strife during the 2007 election or, crucial for Nyipir's plight, the assassination of Thomas Mboya, a leading politician during the early days of Kenyan independence. However, her narrative always remains on the personal level and within the concrete story of the Oganda family and a few important connected characters, mysterious in their own right. DUST is an extraordinary achievement of a novel, even more so as a debut novel. The promise for a 'great read' that I felt when reading the Prologue was greatly surpassed during my reading this captivating and thought provoking story, exquisitely told. [Friederike Knabe]
February 27, 2023
Was bleibt? Viele mögliche Antworten...
Schmerz, so viel Schmerz durchzieht dieses Land, diese Familie, diese Menschen.
"Die Müdigkeit hat selbst die Worte verschluckt, die Brücken sein sollten. Schweigen. Eine Pause. Ajany lernt, unerschrocken in den Abgrund zu blicken. Auch das gehört zum Leben. Wir haben das Ende unserer Kraft erreicht... und so sind wir stumm geworden. Noch ein Neuanfang"
Die ersten 150 Seiten sind eine Wucht -der Sprache, der Emotionen, des Landes:Kenias. Alles ist mit einer zarten Mythologie überzogen, tieferer Bedeutung, bildgewaltiger Sprache.
Wir bekommen immer nur kurze Szenen geliefert- aus dem Jetzt, der Vergangenheit, Erinnerungen.
Das Land und die Menschen winden sich. Sie wollen ihre Geschichte nicht Preis geben.
In Nairobi entwickelt sich der Plot leider sehr sperrig, zäh. Die Magie der Sprache verliert sich. Einige Szenen sind sehr in die Länge gezogen, sind teils unnötig.
Auch im Schlussteil, wieder auf dem Land kann das Buch sprachlich nicht mehr an die anfängliche Grandiosität anknüpfen. Aber es gibt Antworten.
Abschließend betrachtet, liest sich das Buch nicht ganz rund.
3,5 Sterne wären angemessen. Bin allerdings zu tief berührt.
Schmerz, so viel Schmerz durchzieht dieses Land, diese Familie, diese Menschen.
"Die Müdigkeit hat selbst die Worte verschluckt, die Brücken sein sollten. Schweigen. Eine Pause. Ajany lernt, unerschrocken in den Abgrund zu blicken. Auch das gehört zum Leben. Wir haben das Ende unserer Kraft erreicht... und so sind wir stumm geworden. Noch ein Neuanfang"
Die ersten 150 Seiten sind eine Wucht -der Sprache, der Emotionen, des Landes:Kenias. Alles ist mit einer zarten Mythologie überzogen, tieferer Bedeutung, bildgewaltiger Sprache.
Wir bekommen immer nur kurze Szenen geliefert- aus dem Jetzt, der Vergangenheit, Erinnerungen.
Das Land und die Menschen winden sich. Sie wollen ihre Geschichte nicht Preis geben.
In Nairobi entwickelt sich der Plot leider sehr sperrig, zäh. Die Magie der Sprache verliert sich. Einige Szenen sind sehr in die Länge gezogen, sind teils unnötig.
Auch im Schlussteil, wieder auf dem Land kann das Buch sprachlich nicht mehr an die anfängliche Grandiosität anknüpfen. Aber es gibt Antworten.
Abschließend betrachtet, liest sich das Buch nicht ganz rund.
3,5 Sterne wären angemessen. Bin allerdings zu tief berührt.
September 6, 2017
A young man runs for his life in the streets of Nairobi, chased by unnamed assailants. Bullets whiz in all directions. As he runs, he flashes back to his girlfriend and his sister, Ajany. A bullet finds its target and he crumbles. He bleeds on the sidewalk. He coughs up blood. He stops breathing. Odidi Oganda is dead.
This is the dramatic opening of Dust by Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor. Serving as the focal point, Odidi’s death catapults us down labyrinthine paths that intertwine the tragedy of a family with that of a nation. Its many disparate threads weave in and out of the narrative, frequently returning to the focal point of Odidi’s death.
An Englishman comes to Kenya in search of his father; a father mourns for his son; a sister returns from Brazil to bury her brother and to learn the mysterious circumstances of his death; a mother runs away in a burst of uncontrollable rage. Each character is haunted by a past; each character wrestles with demons that won’t release their grip.
Threaded intermittently throughout this family tragedy is the story of Kenya: the political upheavals, the Mau Mau uprising of the 1950s, assassinations, murders, violence, torture, unidentified mass graves, secrets, lies, unspeakable crimes, revenge, smuggling rings, and corrupt officials.
This is a difficult book to read, not only because of its content. Adhiambo Owuor’s writing style presents some challenges. Much of the novel is written in fragments, one word sentences, shifts in time with no transitions, references to past events and people that leave the reader clueless, the occasional stream of consciousness in which a character shifts from the present to the past because a memory is triggered, and a smattering of Swahili which may or may not be followed by an English translation.
All this can be bewildering. But as we get accustomed to Owuor’s writing style and learn to read the novel, we may find it easier to decipher and piece together the disparate threads. Owuor captures the truncated language of trauma and recovery on behalf of a nation and its people, the fragmentary nature of memory, the struggle to deal with the violent death of a loved one, a speech that reveals only half-truths, secrets that refuse to stay buried, a country ravaged by violence and political turmoil, and an all-encompassing thin layer of dust covering the land and its people—a dust which blows this way and that at the slightest provocation to reveal the horrors that lie beneath.
What emerges from this complex work is a challenging read but one that is worth the effort for those willing to grapple with its style.
Recommended.
This is the dramatic opening of Dust by Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor. Serving as the focal point, Odidi’s death catapults us down labyrinthine paths that intertwine the tragedy of a family with that of a nation. Its many disparate threads weave in and out of the narrative, frequently returning to the focal point of Odidi’s death.
An Englishman comes to Kenya in search of his father; a father mourns for his son; a sister returns from Brazil to bury her brother and to learn the mysterious circumstances of his death; a mother runs away in a burst of uncontrollable rage. Each character is haunted by a past; each character wrestles with demons that won’t release their grip.
Threaded intermittently throughout this family tragedy is the story of Kenya: the political upheavals, the Mau Mau uprising of the 1950s, assassinations, murders, violence, torture, unidentified mass graves, secrets, lies, unspeakable crimes, revenge, smuggling rings, and corrupt officials.
This is a difficult book to read, not only because of its content. Adhiambo Owuor’s writing style presents some challenges. Much of the novel is written in fragments, one word sentences, shifts in time with no transitions, references to past events and people that leave the reader clueless, the occasional stream of consciousness in which a character shifts from the present to the past because a memory is triggered, and a smattering of Swahili which may or may not be followed by an English translation.
All this can be bewildering. But as we get accustomed to Owuor’s writing style and learn to read the novel, we may find it easier to decipher and piece together the disparate threads. Owuor captures the truncated language of trauma and recovery on behalf of a nation and its people, the fragmentary nature of memory, the struggle to deal with the violent death of a loved one, a speech that reveals only half-truths, secrets that refuse to stay buried, a country ravaged by violence and political turmoil, and an all-encompassing thin layer of dust covering the land and its people—a dust which blows this way and that at the slightest provocation to reveal the horrors that lie beneath.
What emerges from this complex work is a challenging read but one that is worth the effort for those willing to grapple with its style.
Recommended.
May 15, 2014
It is rare one gets to read a novel that intimately explores a place intimately connected to one’s own life. It happens generally, of course. Novels explore matters of humanity and in that way touch us one way or another.
But Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor has written a novel of Kenya (but also perhaps of Africa, and that said also of the world), set mainly in northern Kenya, where I have lived and worked. She takes me to home away from home.
Not, however, by way of nostalgia. Much of this book jarred my memories with weird contradictions.
For instance, it is a story about places but the places are all mixed up. It is a story about people but the people are all mixed up, living where one does not expect them to live. I suspect that is Adhiambo Owuor’s aim, to shake a large jar and see how the contents fall out, where they land, and in what strange proximities to one another.
I found this disconcerting at first. Prevailing winds here come from the wrong direction. Rivers which flow east were somehow north and west. Settlements that should be here were there. People walked in one direction and ended up elsewhere.
Once I caught on to the swing of things, it worked, in part because it did jangle orientations.
The main protagonists appear to represent an assortment of ethnicities mostly but not exclusively Kenyan but mostly from outside the Chalbi Desert area, including a man and his son from England. Yet they find themselves here playing out both local, regional, national, and international dramas in each other’s company. The story even works as a sort of parable of modernity, a story of people getting mixed up in each other’s business, according to new historical conditions, distorting each other in ways they cannot have imagined.
But despite all this mixing up, Adhiambo Owuor delivers a sense of the there that is there: the windy desert evenings, the stars, the rustle of doum palm, the lurking shadows of hyenas, the aches of abandoned hearts.
The place is dear to my own heart and I’m grateful to have gone back and met this strange cast of characters from across the continent and beyond, all meeting up in a place of acacia trees and camels herds.
I’ve written about d’abella, a sort of priestly class of men who are women among the nomadic Gabra. Adhiambo Owuor includes here a strange one with a malevolent curse. It was another of those jarring ingredients. D’abella usually offer peace and blessings, not curses. Perhaps this is another of those random rearrangements from the great jar of current circumstance.
I found myself at the end wanting to start again at the beginning, just to return to that place of dizzying juxtapositions.
But Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor has written a novel of Kenya (but also perhaps of Africa, and that said also of the world), set mainly in northern Kenya, where I have lived and worked. She takes me to home away from home.
Not, however, by way of nostalgia. Much of this book jarred my memories with weird contradictions.
For instance, it is a story about places but the places are all mixed up. It is a story about people but the people are all mixed up, living where one does not expect them to live. I suspect that is Adhiambo Owuor’s aim, to shake a large jar and see how the contents fall out, where they land, and in what strange proximities to one another.
I found this disconcerting at first. Prevailing winds here come from the wrong direction. Rivers which flow east were somehow north and west. Settlements that should be here were there. People walked in one direction and ended up elsewhere.
Once I caught on to the swing of things, it worked, in part because it did jangle orientations.
The main protagonists appear to represent an assortment of ethnicities mostly but not exclusively Kenyan but mostly from outside the Chalbi Desert area, including a man and his son from England. Yet they find themselves here playing out both local, regional, national, and international dramas in each other’s company. The story even works as a sort of parable of modernity, a story of people getting mixed up in each other’s business, according to new historical conditions, distorting each other in ways they cannot have imagined.
But despite all this mixing up, Adhiambo Owuor delivers a sense of the there that is there: the windy desert evenings, the stars, the rustle of doum palm, the lurking shadows of hyenas, the aches of abandoned hearts.
The place is dear to my own heart and I’m grateful to have gone back and met this strange cast of characters from across the continent and beyond, all meeting up in a place of acacia trees and camels herds.
I’ve written about d’abella, a sort of priestly class of men who are women among the nomadic Gabra. Adhiambo Owuor includes here a strange one with a malevolent curse. It was another of those jarring ingredients. D’abella usually offer peace and blessings, not curses. Perhaps this is another of those random rearrangements from the great jar of current circumstance.
I found myself at the end wanting to start again at the beginning, just to return to that place of dizzying juxtapositions.
November 28, 2015
The story line had a lot of potential for a master piece. However, call it artistic or whatever, the book was damn difficult to read. Yvonne jumped all over without warning, leaving the reader wondering where she or he was at.
I think the book was raising an awareness about Kenya, with special reference to the ideal Kenya that The murdered Mr. Mboya sacrificed for, and the current mess the country finds itself into, in the hands of current politicians. The fictitious story around which the story was based consisted of various people, each with a different character. My analysis of the characters was as follows:
1. They all suffered injustices one way or the other, but I think Nyipir suffered the most.
2. Akai-ma was too free spirited and had no responsible bone in her body.
3. Odidi was an idealist and I identified with him in many ways.
4. Galgalu was the most loyal person ever.
5. Petrus was the most evil, while the trader was the most fascinating.
Believe it or not, there were many similarities between Akai - ma and her daughter Ajany e.g
1. They were both born hot ( whatever that means).
2. They both lacked their mother's love and support.
3. They had "jungle fever".
4. They couldn't face reality and always opted for fleeing the situation.
Yes, there were many questions the author left un-answered, which got me wondering, e.g:
1. Who really killed Mr. Moyà?
2. Who killed Odidi?
3. Who is Isiaih biological father?
4. Was Odidi really Justine's baby's father?
I appreciated the suspense but the writing style , though artistic and poetic, killed the book.
I think the book was raising an awareness about Kenya, with special reference to the ideal Kenya that The murdered Mr. Mboya sacrificed for, and the current mess the country finds itself into, in the hands of current politicians. The fictitious story around which the story was based consisted of various people, each with a different character. My analysis of the characters was as follows:
1. They all suffered injustices one way or the other, but I think Nyipir suffered the most.
2. Akai-ma was too free spirited and had no responsible bone in her body.
3. Odidi was an idealist and I identified with him in many ways.
4. Galgalu was the most loyal person ever.
5. Petrus was the most evil, while the trader was the most fascinating.
Believe it or not, there were many similarities between Akai - ma and her daughter Ajany e.g
1. They were both born hot ( whatever that means).
2. They both lacked their mother's love and support.
3. They had "jungle fever".
4. They couldn't face reality and always opted for fleeing the situation.
Yes, there were many questions the author left un-answered, which got me wondering, e.g:
1. Who really killed Mr. Moyà?
2. Who killed Odidi?
3. Who is Isiaih biological father?
4. Was Odidi really Justine's baby's father?
I appreciated the suspense but the writing style , though artistic and poetic, killed the book.
December 31, 2016
A story of damaged people in a damaged country, with lyrical poetic passages. Information is meted out in dribs and drabs, which made the story somewhat confusing at times, particularly as my knowledge of the history of Kenya is pretty much nil. Although much gets resolved by the end, I'm not sure that I truly figured out why two of the characters, Akai-ma and Hugh Bolton, acted as they did. A very interesting read, definitely worth the time.
March 22, 2014
A very difficult read. The words are too flowery and the story is choppy and difficult to follow. Unfortunately because of the style of writing I will not finish this book.
June 28, 2014
Dust
Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor
Product description:
From a breathtaking new voice, a novel about a splintered family in Kenya—a story of power and deceit, unrequited love, survival and sacrifice.
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 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 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.
Why did you read this book:
• Vine review
• Enjoy historical fiction
What did reviewers say about this book:
“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
“Owuor’s fragmentary style is dense but lyrical.” —New Yorker
“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)
My thoughts:
“History is the third parent”
-- Nadeem Aslam The Blind Man’s Garden
I was immediately captivated by this elegantly rich well-constructed atmospheric work which explores the birthing and rising up of a new nation, Kenya through the eyes of a family wrought with secrets, silence, and surviving. It is the history of the past fifty years of Kenya most notably the Mau Mau uprisings of the early 1950s, the 1969 political assignation of Tom Mboya, and the violence associated with the 2007 elections that provides the anchors in time for the reader and the motivation points for the characters to deliberate their decisions. And, yes it helps to know about these events, but it is easy enough” to google” them to learn more, if necessary. Most of the action takes place in northern Kenya and it is the author’s poetic language of the landscape which tenderly showcases the beauty and austerity of this not well-known region. While I was often mesmerized by this language, at times it was a little too much and overpowered the storyline and the characters.
One of the key characters is Odidi Oganda, dying in the opening scene is the impetus for the gathering of his family and the other characters as answers are sought out. The storyline moves back and forth as bodies/bones evoke memories and breaks the bonds of silence. The narrator so aptly noted that after 1968 Kenya’s official languages became “English, Kiswahili, and Silence.” But most intriguing of all the characters is Odidi’s mother, Akai. She plays many roles and is connected to the major characters where here actions willingly and unwillingly is the threat of memory of too many wounds. I will be interesting to see what her place will be in African literature.
This vividly draw and emotionally written novel ties up the loose ends but most importantly provides the necessary hope for the characters and the country to move forward.
Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor
Product description:
From a breathtaking new voice, a novel about a splintered family in Kenya—a story of power and deceit, unrequited love, survival and sacrifice.
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 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 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.
Why did you read this book:
• Vine review
• Enjoy historical fiction
What did reviewers say about this book:
“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
“Owuor’s fragmentary style is dense but lyrical.” —New Yorker
“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)
My thoughts:
“History is the third parent”
-- Nadeem Aslam The Blind Man’s Garden
I was immediately captivated by this elegantly rich well-constructed atmospheric work which explores the birthing and rising up of a new nation, Kenya through the eyes of a family wrought with secrets, silence, and surviving. It is the history of the past fifty years of Kenya most notably the Mau Mau uprisings of the early 1950s, the 1969 political assignation of Tom Mboya, and the violence associated with the 2007 elections that provides the anchors in time for the reader and the motivation points for the characters to deliberate their decisions. And, yes it helps to know about these events, but it is easy enough” to google” them to learn more, if necessary. Most of the action takes place in northern Kenya and it is the author’s poetic language of the landscape which tenderly showcases the beauty and austerity of this not well-known region. While I was often mesmerized by this language, at times it was a little too much and overpowered the storyline and the characters.
One of the key characters is Odidi Oganda, dying in the opening scene is the impetus for the gathering of his family and the other characters as answers are sought out. The storyline moves back and forth as bodies/bones evoke memories and breaks the bonds of silence. The narrator so aptly noted that after 1968 Kenya’s official languages became “English, Kiswahili, and Silence.” But most intriguing of all the characters is Odidi’s mother, Akai. She plays many roles and is connected to the major characters where here actions willingly and unwillingly is the threat of memory of too many wounds. I will be interesting to see what her place will be in African literature.
This vividly draw and emotionally written novel ties up the loose ends but most importantly provides the necessary hope for the characters and the country to move forward.
June 9, 2014
Elegant anger. That is the term I read somewhere that best describes Yvonne Owuor's writing. This book is not for the timid or lazy reader. It takes an investment of time and concentration, however I think you will be richly rewarded for having done so. Her writing style is a blend of poetry and fragmented sentences. The book is told through the memories of its' characters, sometimes present, sometimes past, but never does the story move froward in a linear fashion. That combination makes for a challenging read, but well worth the effort.
It is the story of a family in Kenya, a brother Odidi killed early in the novel, in the streets of Nairobi. The circumstances of his death are a bit murky but get flushed out over the course of the book. His sister Ajany returns from Brazil to deal with the death of her brother.
"Ajany scrubs her face and stares at two sides of the world. Before-now was four hours and forty-three minutes ago. rained upon earth mingling with smoke and age and dust and cow's on a father's coat, and her head tucked into its folds in welcome at the airport, the scent of coming home from all her Far Aways....But-now is made of the murmured anguished of other strangers--a ragged quartet oozing old clothes smell....Ajany looks away from these other citizens of the sea box absence." That passage should give you a sense of her literary style.
The father Nyipir Oganda has a complex history that is revealed through his own stilted memories. Much of Kenya's history is explored through the character of Oganda and his suppressed silences. The mother Akai-ma, not much is known of her until the last quarter of the book is quite an interesting character. There are other players in the novel, and the history of Kenya is always the ever present backdrop to the novel. The history in never flushed out in direct detail, but you get the sense of the country spiraling out of control after the assassination of Tom Mboya.
"After Mboya, everything that could die in Kenya did, even schoolchildren standing in front of a hospital that the Leader of the Nation had come to open. A central province was emptied of a people who were renamed cockroaches and 'beasts from the west'. But nobody would acknowledge the exiles or citizens who did not make it out of the province before they were destroyed. Oaths of profound silences- secret shots in a slithering civil war...... After Mboya, Kenya's official languages: English, Kiswahili, and Silence. There was also memory."
There is so much to digest in this novel and the beautiful language amongst so much ugliness keeps you reading on. She gives you pieces of a character's story and then you hunger for more until the puzzle is complete. One such character was Isaiah, an Englishman who travels to Kenya to find his father Hugh Bolton, who is connected to the Oganda family. His journey of discovery is intriguing to the reader.
There are a couple of unanswered questions at the novel's end, but all told the puzzle is exquisitely pieced together.
It is the story of a family in Kenya, a brother Odidi killed early in the novel, in the streets of Nairobi. The circumstances of his death are a bit murky but get flushed out over the course of the book. His sister Ajany returns from Brazil to deal with the death of her brother.
"Ajany scrubs her face and stares at two sides of the world. Before-now was four hours and forty-three minutes ago. rained upon earth mingling with smoke and age and dust and cow's on a father's coat, and her head tucked into its folds in welcome at the airport, the scent of coming home from all her Far Aways....But-now is made of the murmured anguished of other strangers--a ragged quartet oozing old clothes smell....Ajany looks away from these other citizens of the sea box absence." That passage should give you a sense of her literary style.
The father Nyipir Oganda has a complex history that is revealed through his own stilted memories. Much of Kenya's history is explored through the character of Oganda and his suppressed silences. The mother Akai-ma, not much is known of her until the last quarter of the book is quite an interesting character. There are other players in the novel, and the history of Kenya is always the ever present backdrop to the novel. The history in never flushed out in direct detail, but you get the sense of the country spiraling out of control after the assassination of Tom Mboya.
"After Mboya, everything that could die in Kenya did, even schoolchildren standing in front of a hospital that the Leader of the Nation had come to open. A central province was emptied of a people who were renamed cockroaches and 'beasts from the west'. But nobody would acknowledge the exiles or citizens who did not make it out of the province before they were destroyed. Oaths of profound silences- secret shots in a slithering civil war...... After Mboya, Kenya's official languages: English, Kiswahili, and Silence. There was also memory."
There is so much to digest in this novel and the beautiful language amongst so much ugliness keeps you reading on. She gives you pieces of a character's story and then you hunger for more until the puzzle is complete. One such character was Isaiah, an Englishman who travels to Kenya to find his father Hugh Bolton, who is connected to the Oganda family. His journey of discovery is intriguing to the reader.
There are a couple of unanswered questions at the novel's end, but all told the puzzle is exquisitely pieced together.
July 22, 2016
Kenya, in Fragments
Before publication date in late January 2014, I hope that Amazon will have activated the "Look Inside" feature. The enthusiastic endorsements that have been used in advance publicity for this debut novel—praising its epic scale, emotional turmoil, and historic sweep—may well be true, but the reader has to feel comfortable enough with the actual writing to get the measure of the book. If the feature is enabled, read the first three pages. I had hoped that their staccato fragmented style might be a feature of the Prologue only, but no, Owuor returns to this manner frequently throughout. Here is a small sample from the third page, a young man running for his life:
The young man, Odidi Oganda, does not make it past the prologue. But his body is returned to his estranged father Nypir at Wuoth Ogik in the barren north of Kenya. His sister Ajany, an artist, flies back from Brazil. Coincidentally, another pilgrim arrives: Isaiah Bolton, a young man of mixed race from England, who has come to seek traces of his father, who also once lived at Wuoth Ogik. Clearly, there are unsettled scores and potent memories, going back fifty years to the Mau Mau massacres preceding Kenya's independence from Britain. For those who can handle Owuor's almost Faulknerian approach—changing voice and period even in the middle of a paragraph, shifting languages, and jumping around from fact to memory to myth—her book promises great riches. But it requires a reader of much greater mental agility than mine.
Before publication date in late January 2014, I hope that Amazon will have activated the "Look Inside" feature. The enthusiastic endorsements that have been used in advance publicity for this debut novel—praising its epic scale, emotional turmoil, and historic sweep—may well be true, but the reader has to feel comfortable enough with the actual writing to get the measure of the book. If the feature is enabled, read the first three pages. I had hoped that their staccato fragmented style might be a feature of the Prologue only, but no, Owuor returns to this manner frequently throughout. Here is a small sample from the third page, a young man running for his life:
He runs through the stench of decay, the perfume of earth hoping for rain, habits and dreams of Nairobi's people: smoke, rot, trade, worry, residues of laughter, and overbrewed Ketepatea. Odidi runs.The quality is obvious; there are some fine images in Owuor's writing and a knife-point immediacy; it means a lot more to me now that I have got halfway through the book than it did when I first read it. But the fragmentary style is exhausting. And before long, the sheer number of mosaic pieces—names, native phrases, memories, unexplained happenings—has grown so large that even when the author begins to connect them into slightly larger pictures, I found myself constantly having to look back to check on previous references. Younger minds might have less problem, but eventually I just gave up.
Incantation: Justina! Justina!
Shelter of faith.
The mob screams, "Hawa!"
Justina! Faith into sorrow into longing: I need to go home.
"Waue!" The answer.
Memory's tricks. Odidi soars into the desiccated terrains of Wuoth Ogik, the home he had abandoned: his people reaching out for him, cowbells, bleating goats, sheep, and far mountains....
The young man, Odidi Oganda, does not make it past the prologue. But his body is returned to his estranged father Nypir at Wuoth Ogik in the barren north of Kenya. His sister Ajany, an artist, flies back from Brazil. Coincidentally, another pilgrim arrives: Isaiah Bolton, a young man of mixed race from England, who has come to seek traces of his father, who also once lived at Wuoth Ogik. Clearly, there are unsettled scores and potent memories, going back fifty years to the Mau Mau massacres preceding Kenya's independence from Britain. For those who can handle Owuor's almost Faulknerian approach—changing voice and period even in the middle of a paragraph, shifting languages, and jumping around from fact to memory to myth—her book promises great riches. But it requires a reader of much greater mental agility than mine.
July 3, 2016
A poetic, haunting book weakened by over-use of poetic haunting. Suspense evaporates instead of crystallizing. Owuor writes well and opened up so many deep stories within this story, but they mostly fizzled, and what didn't fizzle took too long to explain because the plot was written in endless, breathless lines of one-word dialogue. Very tiring to read once one realizes there will never be a gulp of air. I began to learn so much and left with so many more questions-- about 2007 election violence, about corruption, about the way Mau Mau and colonial violence bleeds into present-day Kenya-- but Owuor didn't even draw the questions out far enough to create whole questions. I was left baited, breathless, no inhale.
Edited to add, after sleeping on it:
The book changes from a fast-paced, plot-driven novel, with each erratic thought in the opening scene driving a history or a search. Then, as the characters come together and entwine, the story is set aside for the emotion and presence of their relationships, pasts are revealed but don't create clear futures. Nothing adds up. This is what I didn't like about the book; I didn't enjoy the transition.
What I did like will probably stand up over time, though. Owuor created a vision of overlapping Kenyas in what is said and shared, versus what is guarded in secrets. Experiences, histories, knowledges, lineages, traumas, guilts, loves, deaths, even children and so much more are placed carefully away by the protagonists and witnesses in a side-realm of silence, suppression, some balance of fiercely close-guarded trauma and miraculous ability to move on.
Dust touches on the 2007 Kenyan election violence, but just barely. It's impact comes out as small mentions as the characters move across the landscape, with news here and there of violence or deaths but never directly addressing or interacting with it. I read Dust as the International Criminal Court (ICC) dropped the final case against the last person accused of instigating and supporting this violence, failing over and over again to hold anyone accountable, due to a mix of, among other things, domestic political opposition (some of the accused won the election) and direct threats against witnesses. This book is all about the discreet silences that protected those who killed and tortured in the Mau Mau and colonial/post-colonial period... offering insight into why the ICC's case could not hold water, regardless of the evidence. It could not stand up to the culture of silences, could not penetrate the secret realm.
Edited to add, after sleeping on it:
The book changes from a fast-paced, plot-driven novel, with each erratic thought in the opening scene driving a history or a search. Then, as the characters come together and entwine, the story is set aside for the emotion and presence of their relationships, pasts are revealed but don't create clear futures. Nothing adds up. This is what I didn't like about the book; I didn't enjoy the transition.
What I did like will probably stand up over time, though. Owuor created a vision of overlapping Kenyas in what is said and shared, versus what is guarded in secrets. Experiences, histories, knowledges, lineages, traumas, guilts, loves, deaths, even children and so much more are placed carefully away by the protagonists and witnesses in a side-realm of silence, suppression, some balance of fiercely close-guarded trauma and miraculous ability to move on.
Dust touches on the 2007 Kenyan election violence, but just barely. It's impact comes out as small mentions as the characters move across the landscape, with news here and there of violence or deaths but never directly addressing or interacting with it. I read Dust as the International Criminal Court (ICC) dropped the final case against the last person accused of instigating and supporting this violence, failing over and over again to hold anyone accountable, due to a mix of, among other things, domestic political opposition (some of the accused won the election) and direct threats against witnesses. This book is all about the discreet silences that protected those who killed and tortured in the Mau Mau and colonial/post-colonial period... offering insight into why the ICC's case could not hold water, regardless of the evidence. It could not stand up to the culture of silences, could not penetrate the secret realm.
March 20, 2014
DUST opens with a brilliant, charismatic hero running for his life through the streets of Nairobi. He's chased down, shot, and killed by the police. All in chapter 1. He returns only in his lingering affect on the novel's main characters.
What follows is spectacular, inventive, complex writing unlike anything I've read. There are mysteries in this book: mysteries of identity of parentage of disappearances and untimely deaths. These mysteries apply to the characters and to the country in which they're set: To its politics, its history, its (beautifully described) natural beauty. The plot, which rarely wavers, grapples with these mysteries.
One of my favorite elements in the book is the writing itself--Owuor is truly a new, fresh voice. If the thread of a thought passes from one person to another, the point of view shifts with it. Sometimes complex meaning is conveyed with a single word. I had to learn how to read DUST, and this is a challenge the first 20 or so pages.
But the plot is exciting, the characters are compelling, and the writing really is worth reading for its own sake.
What follows is spectacular, inventive, complex writing unlike anything I've read. There are mysteries in this book: mysteries of identity of parentage of disappearances and untimely deaths. These mysteries apply to the characters and to the country in which they're set: To its politics, its history, its (beautifully described) natural beauty. The plot, which rarely wavers, grapples with these mysteries.
One of my favorite elements in the book is the writing itself--Owuor is truly a new, fresh voice. If the thread of a thought passes from one person to another, the point of view shifts with it. Sometimes complex meaning is conveyed with a single word. I had to learn how to read DUST, and this is a challenge the first 20 or so pages.
But the plot is exciting, the characters are compelling, and the writing really is worth reading for its own sake.
August 17, 2015
Dust is a symphony of memories, love, and grief. I savored the reading, the language, the story – and I also had to read slowly lest I be be overwhelmed.
Ostensibly the story is of a family and what happens when Odidi, the adult son, is shot. Dust is also the story of the hopes, dreams, achievements and disappointments of Odidi and Ajany, their parents Nyipir and Akai, of Galgalu, of Isaiah’s search, of a wandering trader, and of two policemen, Petrus and Ali Dida Hada. It is also the story of Kenya.
I knew this one would be a good read when I read the prologue, and, in spite of knowing what happens from the dust jacket, was pulled in immediately and kept reading, reading and hoping for a different result. And in spite of Odidi’s death, found the prologue beautiful.
The book is stunning, dense, and complex. And I’m going to leave it at that. Perhaps after I familiarize myself more with Kenya’s history and reread the book I could provide a more thorough analysis, but I don’t want to do that right now. This is a wonderful book. Read it!
Ostensibly the story is of a family and what happens when Odidi, the adult son, is shot. Dust is also the story of the hopes, dreams, achievements and disappointments of Odidi and Ajany, their parents Nyipir and Akai, of Galgalu, of Isaiah’s search, of a wandering trader, and of two policemen, Petrus and Ali Dida Hada. It is also the story of Kenya.
I knew this one would be a good read when I read the prologue, and, in spite of knowing what happens from the dust jacket, was pulled in immediately and kept reading, reading and hoping for a different result. And in spite of Odidi’s death, found the prologue beautiful.
The book is stunning, dense, and complex. And I’m going to leave it at that. Perhaps after I familiarize myself more with Kenya’s history and reread the book I could provide a more thorough analysis, but I don’t want to do that right now. This is a wonderful book. Read it!
June 18, 2019
This is an impressive tale about the fate of a northern Kenyan family. As the family members mourn and come to terms with the violent death of the son, Odidi, the story interweaves their recollections of individual experiences of violence, injustice and repression spanning Kenya’s history from colonial times to the outburst of electoral violence in 2007. Through this, the book reflects on the role of memory and forgetting, both in how people cope with traumas from the past and the role it plays in Kenya’s fractious nation-building process. The non-linearity of the writing and the recourse to sparse language and clipped phrasing makes the reading occasionally difficult and drawn out. But it also lends the book a very particular character: the story is like a painting that slowly emerges from loose-handed brushstrokes. A challenging but beautiful book, that paints a vivid image of Kenya’s past and the complex ties that bind people together, including through suffering.
July 16, 2014
Not an easy read but rewarding all the same. I did feel that she dragged the story for a longer time than expected and then all of a sudden spewed the secrets almost as if in a hurry to finish. However, the vocabulary keeps you on the edge and it is a fresh new writing style I am glad to have been introduced to.
February 24, 2016
Gorgeous, luscious poetic writing -- but I got totally lost in the plot.
September 23, 2023
I was ready to give up on the first half of this book, it was such a difficult book, the language was so complicated and I was struggling with when and how characters were introduced.
It seemed like it was going on and on sometimes losing me in vivid descriptions.
I was struggling so much but was already too invested, I am glad because the second half of the book came together beautifully, the family dynamics made sense, the relationships flowed and the dialogue became more convincing it's as if the book was written by two different people, the first one show offy and out of this world and the second one a true narrator.
It was good.
It seemed like it was going on and on sometimes losing me in vivid descriptions.
I was struggling so much but was already too invested, I am glad because the second half of the book came together beautifully, the family dynamics made sense, the relationships flowed and the dialogue became more convincing it's as if the book was written by two different people, the first one show offy and out of this world and the second one a true narrator.
It was good.
March 6, 2016
Was für ein Buch! Da es ein Rezensionsexemplar von vorablesen war hat es mich zuerst so gar nicht interessiert, weil ich mit Afrika nicht die allerbesten Dinge verbinde, aber dann hat die Neugier doch gesiegt. Und ich kann nur sagen: zum Glück!
Worum geht's?
Odidi Oganda wird in einer Seitenstraße in Nairobi erschossen. Sein Vater Aggrey Nyipir Oganda möchte ihn zu ihrer Farm - Wuoth Ogik - bringen, um ihn dort zu begraben, Odidis Schwester Arabel Ajany Oganda, die aus Brasilien gekommen ist, ist mit dabei. Gerade als der Vater dabei ist, seinen toten Sohn zu begraben, taucht ein weißer Mann auf, Isaiah Bolton, der auf der Suche nach seinem Vater ist. Mit dem Auftauchen des Engländers bricht ein Ablauf von Geschehnissen auf, die die Personen in diesem Buch aus der Bahn werfen und für den einen oder anderen einen brutalen Schnitt im jeweiligen Lebenslauf bedeuten.
Die Autorin Yvonne Owuor beschreibt das innige Verhältnis von Ajany und ihrem älteren Bruder Odidi in einer wunderbaren Art und Weise, den Schmerz Odidis, als sich seine Schwester entschließt, Afrika den Rücken zu kehren, um zu studieren und als Künstlerin zu arbeiten. Odidi wird als Mitbegründer einer Ingenieursfirma Zeuge einer grauenhaften Umweltkatastrophe, bei der skrupellose Geschäftsmänner bewusst einen Stausee sabotieren, um aus dem entstehenden Schaden Kapital zu schlagen. Die Ingenieursfirma soll alibimäßig die Reparaturarbeiten durchführen und wird dafür fürstlich entlohnt. Als Odidi versucht, dieses Verbrechen an die Öffentlichkeit zu bringen, wird er diesen Leuten gefährlich und lästig - sie beseitigen ihn.
Im weiteren Verlauf der Geschichte spielt dieser Vorfall keine Rolle mehr, zu sehr werden die Hinterbliebenen vom Tod des jungen Mannes aus der Bahn geworfen: die Mutter Akai-ma Lokorijma wird von ihrem Schmerz derart überwältigt, dass sie Hals über Kopf in die Wüste verschwindet, um ihrer Trauer Raum zu geben, dabei vergisst sie völlig, dass sie noch eine Tochter hat, die sie braucht. Der Vater ist ebenfalls in seiner Trauer gefangen, als Isaiah Bolton auftaucht und nach seinem Vater fragt. Wuoth Ogik, die Farm der Ogandas, war ursprünglich das Zuhause von Hugh Bolton, einem grausamen und selbstbezogenen Engländer, der für sich und seine Frau Selene - die Mutter von Isaiah Bolton - dieses Haus als Paradies auf Erden baute - als SEIN Paradies auf Erden. Doch durch die Säuberungen und Massaker, die in den 1960er und 1070er Jahren die englischen Kolonialisten, aber auch Einheimische, scheinbar willkürlich nach und nach ausmerzten, kehrte Selene nach England zurück, um dort Isaiah auf die Welt zu bringen, während Hugh in Afrika blieb und im Krieg um Vorherrschaft kräftig mitmischte. Seine Verbindung zu Akai-ma Lokorijom besiegelt letztendlich sein Schicksal.
Alle Verwicklungen und Verbindungen, alle Lösungen und Aufdeckungen können in nur einer Rezension kaum beschrieben werden, ohne ein eigenes kleines Buch daraus zu machen. Auf knapp 500 Seiten entwirft Owuor ein Kaleidoskop an Farben, Gerüchen, Landschaften, Städten, Personen, Beziehungen, Gefühlen, Träumen und Ängste, die einem kaum Zeit lassen, um Luft zu holen. Ihre Sprache ist gewaltig und so voller Lebendigkeit, dass man glaubt, man wäre direkt vor Ort. So etwas erlebe ich selten, und ich kann wirklich in Bücher eintauchen.
Neben der eigentlichen Geschichte der Familie Oganda erfährt man eine ganze Menge zur Geschichte Kenias, die durch die Bank gewalttätig und Blutrünstig ist, und die viele Tentakel in die Jetztzeit ausgestreckt hat. Auch heute noch wird der Alltag der Menschen von Gewalt, Korruption, Staatswillkür und Repressalien bestimmt. Trotzdem transportiert die Autorin einen Lebenswillen der Bevölkerung in Richtung des Lesers, eine ungebrochene Liebe zum Leben und einen Reichtum an Kultur, Religion, Brauchtum - dass man sich dieser Wucht kaum entziehen kann.
Ein klitzekleiner Kritikpunkt meinerseits ist der teilweise fehlende rote Faden der Geschichte. Es gibt zwar einen, aber er wird immer wieder durch Rückblenden und Erzählungen unterbrochen, bei dem es dem Leser überlassen wird, wie er diese Einsprengsel einordnet. Das war vor allem am Anfang ein bisschen mühsam und birgt die Gefahr, dass einige Personen vorzeitig das Buch abbrechen könnten. Wenn man aber dranbleibt, lernt man, dass diese Einwürfe irgendwann aufgeklärt werden und sich dem Leser früher oder später erschließen.
Von mir also eine unbedingte Leseempfehlung - nicht nur für bibliophile Bücherwürmer, sondern auch für alle, die der Meinung sind, die afrikanische Literatur ist nicht allzu präsent auf dem deutschen Buchmarkt. Und für sowieso alle, die ein bisschen mehr über Afrika und dessen Geschichte erfahren möchten, ohne unpersönliche Geschichtsbücher durchackern zu müssen.
Lesen!!
January 6, 2019
This book, about the death of a beloved son and brother, amidst the backdrop of the 2008 Kenyan election violence, but also the horrors of trying to decolonize a country that should have never been colonized in the first place, explores tribalism, the way that violence engulfs everyday people, the heartbreak of a beloved country at war with itself, dreams delayed, family ties, love, lust, silence as a language, and the vast indifference of the universe in human suffering. This book was written about the time before the grief. Kenya felt like a country waiting to cry for it’s dead, but not yet having the languages to do it. Whew. If that sounds like a lot, it’s because it was. This book. It was one I really had to concentrate on. Parts of the story were improbable, but it served the narrative. More and more things came to the surface and so much clearly remained below. This is an excellent read if you’re down for an epic journey into places that a nation is just reckoning with.
March 8, 2018
If there's a book I'll never stop falling in love with is this one. Beautifully paced. Poetic story telling (probably why to many it was a hard read). The power of silence that tore apart a family. The constant use of silence by the government to change the narrative day by day. The murder of a son revealing hidden truths that led a family apart. The search for truth that brought others to the family. The hidden pasts that haunt the family. Finally, reconciliation, hope, peace, newness brought about by truth.
This is a book I will probably read every year as Yvonne captures Kenya and its political history in a riveting way. A must read for every Kenyan but not just Kenyans for all. To learn to speak even when words are not enough. To refuse silence, even if it costs your life.
This is a book I will probably read every year as Yvonne captures Kenya and its political history in a riveting way. A must read for every Kenyan but not just Kenyans for all. To learn to speak even when words are not enough. To refuse silence, even if it costs your life.
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