Weight of Whispers by Yvonne Adhiambo Owour

About Yvonne Adhiambo Owour

Weight of Whispers by Yvonne Adhiambo Owour

Weight of Whispers tells the story of a Rwandan aristocrat who fled to Kenya during the 1994 genocide. (Halfpricedbooks) Boubacar, once a man of status and refinement, finds himself stripped of everything — wealth, identity, dignity — as a refugee in Nairobi. The story examines the psychological violence of displacement and the unbearable weight of being a survivor when so many others perished. Owuor's prose is spare and precise, charged with a lyrical intensity that gives enormous weight to every sentence. Owuor won the 2003 Caine Prize for African Writing for this work, (Tuko) launching her as one of the most important voices in contemporary African literature. It remains a shattering meditation on genocide, complicity, class, and what remains of a person when everything external is taken away.