Kenyans of a certain age will immediately recall her name as her best known novel, The River and the Source, was required reading for the high school leaving national examinations (KCSE) from 1999 to 2004.

The line by the main protagonist’s father, Chief Odero, the father of Akoko “A home without daughters is like a spring without a source” was a fitting one for a book that placed the stories of the lives of three generations of women at its center.

This book that embraced the spirit of strong African women, while immersing and celebrating Luo culture and tradition, from pre to postcolonial times, won the 1995 Jomo Kenyatta Prize for Literature and the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize, Best First Book, Africa region.

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