I first came across The Dragonfly Sea shortly after it was published in 2019. It attracted my attention for its combination of several interests of mine: Muslim characters, East Africa in literature, Muslims in China, and literary fiction. Since I ended up reading the book over several months – due to personal circumstances and not the quality of the book, I’m in no place to write a detailed review of it. I wanted to write a few words all the same.

Since I started out with high hopes for a practising Muslim protagonist, I did find myself disappointed when her prayers began to disappear from the story and she seemed to remove her scarf and end up in intimate moments with strange men without too much hesitation. I realised I had to adjust my expectations quickly if I wanted to enjoy the rest of the book. I think it’s a credit to the writing and the story that I was able to do that with relative ease – something I have sometimes failed to do with other books. The Islam of the protagonists in this book is perhaps more representative of a certain type of East African Islam that is mixed with local folk beliefs.

This story follows Ayaana, a woman born and raised by her single mother on Pate Island, off the Kenyan coast. With China’s desire to make strategic connections in East Africa, Ayaana is found to be a descendent of the Chinese crew led by Chinese-Muslim admiral, Zheng He, who landed there in late 14th/early 15th Century, and she is offered the opportunity to study at university in China. Given her poor background, this was an opportunity she would never be able to gain otherwise and so she embraces it. We follow her as she tries to connect with this new country she is supposedly part of, learning the language and the social expectations, while facing the reality that she is more of a symbol than a fellow countryperson to most of the people she meets there. Her journey to find belonging also takes her to other places and to meet people from around the world, but throughout it all, she finds herself constantly drawn to the sea, her connection to home. I really enjoyed the way Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor wove in people from so many different countries so naturally, giving the novel a truly global scale and atmosphere. Through this story, the writer was also able to explore political and social issues, such as the effects of the Syrian war and ISIS recruitment in East Africa, and very noticeably, the growing Chinese presence in East Africa through business deals and infrastructure projects, something that is at a huge scale but not often spoken about outside Africa, perhaps.

The most striking aspect of this book for me personally is the way Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor immerses the reader entirely in the setting. Whether it was the beach at dawn on Pate Island, the busy streets of Xiamen or the ornate interior of an Istanbul mansion, at every point of the novel, I found myself able to visualise the setting in glorious detail. Of course, the most vivid settings of all were those involving direct interaction with the sea, which is a character of itself in this book. It holds an almost supernatural place in Ayaana’s life and the story, with Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor drawing heavily from Kenyan legends and beliefs about the sea.

Overall, it is skilfully written with place being the strongest feature for me, but that also delivers strong characters, an engaging plot and a beautiful sense of unity between the many parts of Africa and Asia connected by the sea.