Lyrical, luminous language evokes the beauty of Pate Island, the poetic muezzin's call, even the scent of rosewater that wafts from each page ... Caine Prize winner Owuor follows up her powerful debut, Dust, with a gentler but no less stunning novel of language, lineage, love, and family, those we're born into and those that we create.
...a sprawling, at times unwieldy, epic ... in its omnivorous interest in the world, The Dragonfly Sea is a paean to both cultural diffusion and difference ... the novel dives into a subplot about the war on terror. It seems gratuitous at first — in fact, it is — but Owuor’s descriptions of religious extremism sketch a virulent strain of Islam against which she can contrast Ayaana’s benevolent spiritual journey ... The parallel between this early Sufi icon and her contemporary devotee isn’t perfect. But it reminds us that, as much as The Dragonfly Sea traces the globe, it also depicts an internal pilgrimage.
Elucidating her characters’ emotions and struggles, Owuor takes readers to the core of each one and shows that even in the face of heartache and betrayal, there is always a path to redemption.
It is...a story—an often achingly beautiful story—about love, family, identity and what might be called, at the risk of descending to cliché which the novel itself does not, the inner light of the human spirit ... What one expects might happen, doesn’t quite ... The Dragonfly Sea colorfully dips in and out of several languages which Owuor rarely bothers to translate since she usually ensures the meaning is clear from the context ... In this lyrical and contemplative book, it is not China—Belt and Road in hand—that dominates Africa, but rather, it seems, the other way around.
For all the emphasis on contemporary geopolitics, however, Owuor has ultimately written a novel that is about everything the war on terror cannot register: the vastness, complexity, and richness of East Africa's cultural world. She represents it as a stunning mélange of Islamic and African cultural traditions that are woven together via the motif of the sea. Pate becomes the epicenter of an ethos and a people who move freely, sailing without regard for cultural and national borders. The novel features an enormous cast of vividly drawn characters, from Chinese businessmen to Wahhabi Islamic fundamentalists. Its heart, however, is the quartet of characters who motivate the novel's primary narrative. Rendered in language that is heart-rendingly lyrical (even if it does border on purple at times), Munira, Ayaana, Muhidin, and Ziriyab are unforgettable figures. Owuor's language is so lush, and her vision so vibrant, that by the time Ayaana emulates Muhidin and embarks upon her own sea journey, it doesn't much matter; the reader is likely sunken down into the pleasure of Owuor's sentences. To do so feels like sinking down into the intricacy of East Africa ... A gorgeous novel of Africa's entanglement with the wider world.
Sprawling, beautiful ... Brilliantly capturing Ayaana’s sense of loss of her home and her family, as well as her hope for the future, Owuor’s mesmerizing prose lays bare the swirling global currents that Ayaana is trapped within. With a rollicking narrative and exceptional writing, this epic establishes Owuor as a considerable talent.
