A review by secretbookcase
Dust by Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

challenging dark emotional reflective slow-paced

• Strong character development? Yes

4.0

 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.