The River and the Source by Margaret Ogola

About Margaret Ogola

The River and the Source by Margaret Ogola

Beginning with the formidable matriarch Akoko in the late nineteenth century, The River and the Source traces her bloodline across four generations — through colonialism, Christianity, war, independence, and the AIDS crisis. Each generation of women faces different challenges but carries forward the same essential qualities: strength, love, resourcefulness, and an unbreakable commitment to family and community. The novel won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Africa and became one of the most widely read novels in Kenyan schools. Margaret Ogola — a paediatrician as well as a writer — brought both her scientific mind and her deep faith to this book, creating a narrative that is simultaneously an intimate family story and a sweeping history of Kenya's transformation. It is one of the great novels of African womanhood.