My Father's Head by Okwiri Odour

About Okwiri Odour

My Father's Head by Okwiri Odour

Okwiri Oduor won the 2014 Caine Prize for African Writing for My Father's Head, becoming the third Kenyan to win the prize after Binyavanga Wainaina and Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor. (WAKILISHA) The story follows a woman grieving her father who attempts, on the anniversary of his death, to reconstruct him whole from the pieces she remembers — his voice, his laugh, his smell, his stories. What emerges is both a tender act of love and a haunting exploration of how memory distorts, fills in, and ultimately fails us. Oduor's prose is incandescent — precise and strange and deeply felt — and she approaches grief with a surreal imagination that makes the emotional truth land harder, not softer. A short but unforgettable work that announced a major new talent in African literature.