Great African Reads discussion

Big apologies that I am posting this late! This month we are featuring Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor, winner of the 2003 Caine Prize for her story "Weight of Whispers." She also wrote Dust, which I loved.

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 from 2003 to 2005 was the Executive Director of the Zanzibar International Film Festival.[3] 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 of the same title, released in 2007.[4][5]

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.[6]

Her 2014 novel Dust portrays the violent history of Kenya in the second half of the 20th century. Reviewing Dust in The New York Times, Taiye Selasi wrote: "In this dazzling novel you will find the entirety of human experience — tearshed, bloodshed, lust, love — in staggering proportions."[7] Ron Charles of The Washington Post wrote: "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."[8]

You can read Taiya Selasi's New York Times review here

and you can see her read from Dust here

And here she gives a lecture with Kwani Trust

And a TedXEuston presentation and TedXNairobi

Enjoy!

Thanks for the extra resources! I must check those out. I have already read Dust, here's my review
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
so I will not be reading. But I will definitely look at the above!

I too have already read this compelling book.
I am hoping the author will be publishing again soon in the future.
I will check out the resources listed above.

(I am going to use April to finish up reading Wizard of the Crow :))

I'm taking on Dust!

Beverly wrote: "(I am going to use April to finish up..."

I'm using April to read The River Between

I will get Dust it is a book I have been wanting to read and it's on kindle.

Dust is fantastic! i'm so excited to see people reading it. I don't know if i can do a reread right now, but it's a book that i definitely plan to reread.

I just finished Dust. It enthralled me in the beginning, keeping me up at night in suspense and wonder at her writing. The threads all seemed to taper out and I was left hungry for more exposition. Not just closure-- I can get behind an unexplainable-- but I felt like much of the story was underdeveloped and petered out. I'm not big on too dreamy MFA-style writing either. I don't know, I had trouble finishing the book in the end. It started so tight and suspenseful and then became more of a poem.

Edited to add: 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 domestic political opposition (the accused won the election), international opposition to the ICC's continued focus on African crimes to the neglect of the rest of the world, and direct threats against witnesses. The 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.

I agree with you that the story diffused