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Yvonne Adhiambo
Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor
Kenya
Yvonne is a passionately patriotic Kenyan. She is also the author of the novels The Dragonfly Sea (2019) and Dust (2013), the latter was shortlisted for the Folio Prize. She won the Caine Prize for African Writing in 2003 for the first short story she ever published. She first participated in the prestigious Iowa Writers Programme in 2005, and again in 2017, when she returned to teach the Autumn creative writing class at Grinnell College, Iowa, as a visiting professor. Her work has appeared in McSweeney’s and other publications. Most recently, she was Artist-in-Residence of the DAAD in Berlin, Germany. Yvonne lives at home, in Nairobi, Kenya.
What you can't miss:
A vibrant, stunning coming-of-age novel about a young woman struggling to find her place in a vast world – a poignant exploration of fate, mortality, love, and loss. Told with a glorious lyricism and an unerring sense of compassion, The Dragonfly Sea is a transcendent story of adventure, fraught choices, and of the inexorable need for shelter in a dangerous world.
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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.
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