November 15th 2018
6.15 pm, room IG 411, ground floor of the Main Building at Campus Westend of the Goethe University, Norbert-Wollheim-Platz 1, 60323 Frankfurt
Abstract:
What does China’s creeping
return to Eastern Africa, by way of the
seas, portend for intimate and personal histories of a people
whose far and deep life stories are embedded in these
waters? What future might the ‘Swahili Seas’ imagine for
themselves in an ongoing (yet subtle) confrontation with
the tremendous weight of China’s ambitions that encompasses
a mutually remembered past? Yvonne Owuor’s
forthcoming novel, The Dragonfly Sea (to be published in
early 2019), is a micro-story of the vast Western Indian
Ocean (Swahili Seas) narratives and focuses on a young
woman’s coming-of-age on Pate Island, Lamu Archipelago,
Kenya, a mostly ‘unnoticed’ space, yet one of tremendous
import to significant ‘Indian’ Ocean happenings, including
and in particular, China’s East African return. The lecture is
a creative exploration of the themes in The Dragonfly Sea
which also highlights aspects of the intimacies that bind a
small, time-warped Kenyan Island with a giant China that
has stepped out with quiet but potent force into the world.
Bio:
Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor is a writer from Nairobi,
Kenya. She studied English and History at Kenyatta University,
earned a Master of Arts degree at the University of
Reading, UK and later received an MPhil (Creative Writing)
from the University of Queensland, Brisbane. Her story
“The Weight of Whispers” won her the Caine Prize for African
Writing in 2003. Her debut novel, Dust, published in
2014 was the winner of the 2015 Jomo Kenyatta Literature
prize. Her second book, The Dragonfly Sea (Knopf) will be
available from March 2019. She is at present at the Wissenschaftskolleg
zu Berlin, working on her third novel with the
working title The Long Decay.