‘Dust’, the debut novel by Kenyan author Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor, is being hailed by reviewers in the United States as an \u201castonishing\u201d and \u201cdazzling\u201d work.<\/p>\n
A featured review in the March 2 New York Times edition says readers of Ms Owuor’s story \u201cwill find the entirety of human experience \u2014 tears, bloodshed, lust, love \u2014 in staggering proportions.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Washington Post noted last month that while \u201cfew American readers have heard of this 45-year-old author before, that must change.\u201d Ms Owuor, the Post’s reviewer comments, \u201cdemonstrates extraordinary talent and range in these pages.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sunday New York Times reviewer Taiye Selasi, herself the author of an acclaimed novel about Ghana, further advises that ‘Dust’ is \u201cnot just for Afrophiles. It is for bibliophiles.\u201d<\/p>\n
‘Dust’ is a fictionalised account of Kenya’s history, as experienced through Ms Owuor’s imagined Oganda family. The book is likely to prove controversial in Kenya because of the author’s unsparing account of the nation’s failures and tragedies.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe novel concerns itself with that country\u2019s blood-soaked history \u2014 from the Mau Mau uprisings of the early 1950s to the political assassination of [nationalist Tom Mboya in] 1969 to the post-election violence of 2007,\u201d Ms Selasi writes in her Times review.<\/p>\n
Inventive prose<\/p>\n
But the author’s inventive prose enraptures readers despite the novel’s emotionally wrenching storyline, reviewers agree, with Ms Selasi hailing \u201cthe magic Owuor has made of the classic nation-at-war novel.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe richness of the plot alone will challenge a lazy reader,\u201d Ms Selasi adds. \u201cBut the visceral lusciousness of the prose will thrill a lover of language.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cUltimately,\u201d she continues. \u201cthe disjointed prose mirrors brilliantly the fragmented nature of both memory-keeping and nation-building.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Washington Post’s reviewer, Ron Charles, offers a similar appraisal of the challenges and rewards of Ms Owuor’s writing.<\/p>\n
The Kenyan winner of the Caine Prize in 2003 \u201chas constructed a book that gradually teaches you how to read it,\u201d the Post suggests. \u201cLet 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
Not every review of ‘Dust’, published in the US by Knopf, a leading New York publishing house, has been entirely positive.<\/p>\n
A commentator on National Public Radio observes that every character in the novel \u201cis given such ample room to wax philosophic on lofty concepts like nothingness and the idea of Kenya that it’s a struggle to actually get to know them.\u201d<\/p>\n
But this reviewer, too, was swept away by Ms Owuor’s writing.<\/p>\n
\u201cHer prose can be inventive, even breathtaking, turning phrases or fusing unexpected words in ways that confound and inspire.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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