Kenyan writer soars to greater heights abroad by Justus Kizito Siboe Makokha
Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor is one of the finest Kenyan novelists alive today. The 52-year-old prose writer won the Jomo Kenyatta Prize for Literature in 2015 for her epic novel,
Dust. This is the highest award a writer can gain in Kenya today. Instituted 46 years ago, the list of authors who have won this coveted national prize since the 1970s reads like a gallery of Kenya’s finest writers.
These include Meja Mwangi, Abdilatif Abdalla, Wahome Mutahi, David Maillu, Margaret Ogola, Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye, Kyallo Wamitila, Ken Walibora and my contemporary Stan Gazemba. The revered surgeon Yusuf Dawood and bespectacled Henry Ole Kulet are present in this hall of fame, too.