The Dragonfly Sea: A novel

by Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

NAMED A REAL SIMPLE BOOK OF THE YEAR

From the award-winning author of Dust comes a vibrant, stunning coming-of-age novel about a young woman struggling to find her place in a vast world--a poignant exploration of fate, mortality, love, and loss.

On the island of Pate, off the coast of Kenya, lives solitary, stubborn Ayaana and her mother, Munira. When a sailor named Muhidin, also an outsider, enters their lives, Ayaana finds something she has never had before: a father. But as Ayaana grows into adulthood, forces of nature and history begin to reshape her life and the island itself--from a taciturn visitor with a murky past to a sanctuary-seeking religious extremist, from dragonflies to a tsunami, from black-clad kidnappers to cultural emissaries from China. Ayaana ends up embarking on a dramatic ship's journey to the Far East, where she will discover friends and enemies; be seduced by the charming but unreliable scion of a powerful Turkish business family; reclaim her devotion to the sea; and come to find her own tenuous place amid a landscape of beauty and violence and surprising joy. Told with a glorious lyricism and an unerring sense of compassion, The Dragonfly Sea is a transcendent story of adventure, fraught choices, and of the inexorable need for shelter in a dangerous world.

• ISBN10: 1101973625
• ISBN13: 9781101973622
• Publish Date: 25 February 2020 (first published 12 March 2019)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: Random House USA Inc
• Imprint: Vintage Books
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 512
• Language: English
• URL: https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9781101973622

Reviews

[moraa]

An amazing story about an island forgotten by most. I enjoyed this book immensely and I would readily recommend it to anyone that is looking for a wonderful coming-of-age tale about a young girl. Please pick it up, you will not regret it.