The dragonfly sea A novel

Review by New York Times Review

the Kenyan writer Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor's second novel spans several lives, two continents, one body of water and at least six languages, but what holds it together is not a person, place or tongue. Rather it's a certain oceanic feeling (to lift a line from Freud, who lifted it from Romain Rolland), a sensation of oneness with the universe that gives form to a sprawling, at times unwieldy, epic. The protagonist of "The Dragonfly Sea," Ayaana, "evokes phantasmic worlds. Conjures dreams." "Transfiguring, she transfigures," says a character only capable of describing her in oracular cadences. When the novel begins, Ayaana is a young girl living on Pate, an island off the coast of Kenya. Locals look at her askance. Early mornings, she walks alone by the shore. And when no one is watching, she dips into the sea, whose literal depths allow her to access still deeper personal realms. During these moments of magic realism, thresholds evaporate, boundaries dissolve and oceanic sensations wash over her. Often likened to an emissary, "she saw herself as a bridge ... between worlds and people." Ayaana's ethereal charm isn't the only thing that sets her apart. She's of partial Chinese ancestry, a genealogical curiosity that has its origins in a 15th-century shipwreck on Pate involving one of the great Chinese admiral Zheng He's fleets. Ayaana's heritage earns her the moniker "the Descendant" and gives her the chance to study in China. The trip is both free and costly. She's a guest of the government, whose interests extend no further than the project of "excavating, proving and entrenching Chinese rootedness in Africa," according to the narrator, who is omniscient but unknowable. Thus begins the first of many odysseys in Ayaana's life, which include sailing across the Indian Ocean on a freighter, zooming through China on bullet trains, flying to Istanbul with a classmate and making a triumphal, if complicated, return home. In these peregrinations, and in its omnivorous interest in the world, "The Dragonfly Sea" is a paean to both cultural diffusion and difference. In moments of need, Ayaana seeks out the Persian poems of Hafez, clutches a copy of the tragic romance "Layla and Majnun" and venerates the mystic poet Rabi'a al-Adawiyya. When she and a father figure exchange goodbyes, they do so not in their native Kipate but in Hindi, via a favorite Bollywood lyric. Ayaana is a bit of a Quixote, guided through life by world literature. On the other hand, the novel insists with equal force that its cosmopolitanism is deeply compatible with cruelty. Enter Ayaana's suitors, who range from a possessive Turkish classmate to a persistent Chinese ship captain. Ensorcelled, they often resort to violence. In the midst of Ayaana's travels, 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. Plumbing the depths of the sea and herself, possessing a keen sense of the unseen, Ayaana has embarked on nothing less than a path to Sufism. This mystical and ascetic vein of Islam might seem far removed from Ayaana's life, but the giveaway is the novel's repeated references to al-Adawiyya, the eighth-century holy woman from Basra. 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, its heroine in rose attar a broken saint. The novel's heroine is a bit of a Quixote, guided through life by world literature. SHAJ MATHEW has written for The New Yorker and The New Republic.

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [May 12, 2019]

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Review by Booklist Review

In her second novel, Owuor (Dust, 2014) brings to life a beautiful story of loss and compassion. On the island of Pate, off the coast of Kenya, young girl Ayaana is an outcast from the community and ignored by her scandalous mother. Exploring the beach each day in search of a father she has never known, Ayaana meets a sailor and fellow outcast, Muhidin. A love of the sea brings this unlikely pair together, and Muhidin becomes the father for which Ayaana has always longed. Readers follow Ayaana's journey into adulthood and through her tumultuous voyage off the island. But Pate is like a magnet for lost souls, and all who leave eventually make their way back home. This path is true for Ayaana, and she must face her tragic past before she is able to build her future. 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.--Melissa Norstedt Copyright 2019 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

In this sprawling, beautiful novel from Owuor (Dust), a real-life occurrence of a Kenyan woman travelling to China after learning of her Chinese heritage forms the backdrop for a moving story of loss and discovery. In 1992, on Pate Island, a small island off the coast of Kenya, six-year-old Ayaana spends her days scanning the seas for boats and the return of a father she never knew. One day, a "sun-blackened, salt-water-seared, bug-eyed and brawny" sailor appears and Ayaana chooses him for a father, much to his surprise-and to the chagrin of her mother. Then, years later, when cultural emissaries from China arrive at Pate, 20-year-old Ayaana discovers she is a descendent of 14th-century mariner Admiral Zhang He, whose seafaring expeditions brought him to Africa, and agrees to set sail for China to be united with distant relatives. Once there, she serves as living justification for a commercial Chinese stake in an increasingly globalized Africa: "Cohabiting with shadows-here was the weight of a culture with a hulking history now preparing itself to digest her continent." Attracting attention wherever she goes, Ayaana struggles to assimilate to Chinese culture and is as drawn to the sea as ever. 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. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Library Journal Review

In the 1400s, Chinese admiral Zheng He lost a fleet of ships to the Indian Ocean. Some sailors found safe harbor on Pate Island just off the coast of Kenya. From this fact, Owuor weaves elements of a haunting coming-of-age novel, a seductive romance, and a fascinating historical. Free-spirited Ayaana, child of single mother Munir, suffers bullying at school. Although she excels in class, it's the sea that offers solace. She's most at home among the mangroves, shipbuilders, and fishermen and eventually in the company of elder Muhidin, a lonely soul reborn as a father figure through Ayaana's love. Her mix of African skin and Asian eyes marks Ayaana as a "Descendant," a living symbol of the bonds between East and West and ultimately a recipient of a scholarship for study in China. On her travels, she will meet two men, the hypnotic ship captain Lai Jin and authoritative fellow student Koray Terzioglu, who will vie for her soul. Lyrical, luminous language evokes the beauty of Pate Island, the poetic muezzin's call, even the scent of rosewater that wafts from each page. VERDICT 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.-Sally Bissell, formerly with Lee Cty. Lib. Syst., Fort Myers, FL © Copyright 2019. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

A magisterial novel about life amid East Africa's tumultuous cultural and political ferment in the shadow of the American war on terror.Owuor (Dust, 2014) returns with a sweeping story of lives that intersect on Pate, an island off the coast of Kenya. The island is a palimpsest, a place where people come to forget or rewrite their life stories, and Owuor introduces us to a vivid set of characters who all want to begin their lives again in the island's embrace. We first meet Munira, the daughter of a wealthy business family that tries to marry her off to "an austere scholar" after she becomes pregnant with an unknown man's child. The incident proves ignominious for her family, and soon Munira is left alone on Pate with her irrepressible daughter, Ayaana. The duo lives a quiet life until the sudden arrival of Muhidin, an avowed infidel who long ago abandoned Pate for the life of a sailor. "Between religion and my black skin there shall be a sky's distance until the day I hear the Call to Atonement," he promised upon leaving the island. In his old age, though, he begins to fixate on his home: "Pate," he ruminates. "A phantom-calling invocation. Memories crawled over Muhidin like arachnids sneaking out of forgotten crypts." He soon finds himself bound up in Munira's and Ayaana's lives, as the daughter sees in him the father she never knew, and Muhidin feels himself drawn into a paternal bond with her. Meanwhile, the island is beset by American troopswhom the locals refer to derisively as "the Terrorized"who hope to combat terrorism by cultivating the islanders' hearts and minds. In the midst of the conflict, another stranger arrives: Ziriyab, a migrant fleeing military retribution after his brother participates in the bombing of a foreign navy ship. His appearance forever alters Munira, Ayaana, and Muhidin's motley family. 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 mlange 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. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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Roho ni mgeni. The soul is a visitor (stranger).   1 To cross the vast ocean to their south, water-chasing dragonflies with forebears in Northern India had hitched a ride on a sedate "in-between seasons" morning wind, one of the monsoon's introits, the matlai . One day in 1992, four generations later, under dark-purplish-blue clouds, these fleeting beings settled on the mangrove-fringed southwest coast of a little girl's island. The matlai conspired with a shimmering full moon to charge the island, its fishermen, prophets, traders, seamen, seawomen, healers, shipbuilders, dreamers, tailors, madmen, teachers, mothers, and fathers with a fretfulness that mir­rored the slow-churning turquoise sea.   Dusk stalked the Lamu Archipelago's largest and sullenest island, trudging from Siyu on the north coast, upending Kizingitini's fishing fleets before swooping southwest to brood over a Pate Town that was already moldering in the malaise of unrequited yearnings. Bruised by endless deeds of guile, siege, war, and seduction, like the island that contained it, Pate Town marked melancholic time. A leaden sky poured dull-red light over a crowd of petulant ghosts, dormant feuds, forfeited glories, invisible roads, and congealing millennia-old conspiracies. Weaker light leached into ancient crevices, tombs, and ruins, and signaled to a people who were willing to cohabit with tragedy, trusting that time transformed even cataclysms into echoes.   Deep inside Pate, a cock crowed, and from the depths of space a summons, the Adhan, crescendoed. Sea winds tugged at a little girl's lemon-green headscarf, revealing dense, black curly hair that blew into her eyes. From within her mangrove hideout, the scrawny seven-year-old, wearing an oversized floral dress that she was supposed to grow into, watched dense storm clouds hobble inland. She decided that these were a monster's footsteps, a monster whose strides left streaks of pink light on the sky. Seawater lapped at her knees, and her bare feet sank into the black sand as she clutched another scrawny being, a purring dirty-white kitten. She was betting that the storm--her monster--would reach land before a passenger-laden dau now muddling its way toward the cracked wharf to the right of her. She held her breath. "Home-comers," she called all passengers. Wajio . The child could rely on such home-comers to be jolted like mari­onettes whenever there was a hint of rain. She giggled in anticipation as the midsized dau, with Bi Kidude painted in flaking yellow, eased into the creek. Scattered, soft raindrops. The thunder's spirited rumbling caused every home-comer to raise his or her eyes skyward and squawk like a hornbill. The watch­ing girl sniggered as she stroked her kitten, pinching its fur in her thrill. It mewled. "Shhh," she whispered back as she peered through mangrove leaves, the better to study the passengers' drizzle-blurred faces--a child looking for and gathering words, images, sounds, moods, colors, conversations, and shapes, which she could store in one of the shelves of her soul, to retrieve later and reflect upon. Every day, in secret, she went to and stood by the portals of this sea, her sea. She was waiting for Someone. The girl now moved the kitten from her right to her left shoulder. Its extra-large blue eyes followed the dance of eight golden dragon­flies hovering close by. Thunder. The dau drew parallel to the girl, and she fixated on a man in a cream-colored suit who was slumped over the vessel's edge. She was about to cackle at his discomfort when a high and harried voice intruded: " Ay aaaa na!" Her surveillance of the man was interrupted as lightning split the sky. " Ay aaaa na!" It was her mother. " Ay aaaa na!" At first, the little girl froze. Then she crouched low, almost kneeling in the water, and stroked her kitten. She whispered to it, "Haidhuru" --Don't mind. "She can't see us." Ayaana was supposed to be recovering from a morning asthma attack. Bi Munira, her mother, had rubbed clove oil over her tight­ened chest and stuffed the all-ailment-treating black kalonji seeds into her mouth. They had sat together, naked under a blanket, while a pot of steaming herbs, which included eucalyptus and mint, decongested their lungs. Ayaana had gulped down air and blocked her breath to swallow six full tablespoons of cod-liver oil. She had gurgled a bitter concoction and been lulled to sleep by her mother's dulcet "do-do-do." She had woken up to the sounds of her mother at work: the tinkle of glass, brass, and ceramic; the aroma of rose, clove, langilangi, and moonflower; and the lilts of women's voices inside her mother's rudi­mentary home-based beauty salon. Ayaana had tried. She had half napped until a high-pitched sea wind pierced and scattered her reverie. She had heard far-off thunder, but she had pinned herself to the bed until the persistent beckoning of the storm proved irresistible. Then she rolled out of bed, arranged extra pillows to simulate a body, and covered these with sheets. She squeezed out of a high window and shimmied down drainpipes clamped to the crumbling coral wall. On the ground, she found the kitten she had rescued from a muddy drain several days ago, stretched out on their doorstep. She picked it up and planted it on her right shoulder, dashed off to the seafront, and finally swung north to the mangrove section of the creek, from where she could spy on the world unseen. "Ay aaaa na!" The wind cooled her face. The kitten purred. Ayaana watched the dau . The cream-suited elderly stranger lifted his head. Their eyes connected. Ayaana ducked, pressing into the mangrove shadows, her heart racing. How had that happened? "Ay aaaa na!" Her mother's voice was closer. "Where's that child? Ay aaa na? Must I talk to God?"  Ayaana looked toward the boat and again at the blackening skies. She would never know what landed first, the boat or the storm. She remembered the eyes that had struck hers. Would their owner tell on her? She scanned the passageway, looking for those eyes again. The kitten on her shoulder pressed its face into her neck. "Ay aaaa na! Haki ya Mungu . . . aieee! " The threat-drenched con­tralto came from the bushes to the left of the mangroves. "Aii, mwa­nangu, mbona wanitesa?" Too close. The girl abandoned her cover, splashed through the low tide to reach open sands. Ayaana scrambled from stone to stone, with the kitten clinging to her neck. She dropped out of sight.   The stranger, a man from Nanjing, saw a small creature soar against the backdrop of a black sky, hover, and then fall like a broken-off bough; as she did so, a long chortle erupted out of him. His fellow travelers, already sympathetic about his chronic seasickness, glanced at him with unease. It was not uncommon for seasickness to turn pre­viously sane persons into lunatics. The man focused on the land, eyes active in his placid face. A cataract in his right eye gave it a luminosity in his balding head on his tendon-lined neck. He turned at the sound of a woman's voice calling, "Ay aaaana !" Stomach roil. Craving the sense of land, he tried to measure the distance between the boat and the jetty, hoping that they would dock soon.   Fifteen minutes later, ill-fitting suit aflutter, the visitor stepped off the boat. He had to wade through shallow water to reach the black sand shore. Even though anonymous hands helped him forward, he stumbled. His hands touched the soil. He swallowed air. Here were the rustlings of ghosts. Here was the lonely humming of those who had died far from home and had for too long been neither sought nor remembered. A brown hand dangled in front of his face. He took it. One of the sailors helped him up before handing over his single gray bag. The man intoned, "Itifaki imezingatiwa," and then chortled at a secret joke. The traveler blinked, uneasy and engulfed by redolent evening scents; oudhi spattered enchantment. His breath discerned bitter orange, sweet balsam, and the sweat of the sea blended in a dense air that also heated his bones. Succumbing, inhaling. He then tilted his head toward the hubbub of human arrivals. He heard the music of a rolling tide. He glimpsed an almost storm hovering on the horizon. What was this place? He ambled forward, heels rotating as if his toes had roving eyes. Pale light shone on a pink petal falling from a soli­tary and slender wild-rose bush. The man faltered. He waited for the petal to settle on the ground before reaching for it. Only then did he lift it to his lips, enclosing it in one hand while the other adjusted the condensed contents of a life that fit into the canvas bag hanging from his shoulder. Excerpted from The Dragonfly Sea: A Novel by Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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