Bajaber weaves together the mythical and the real and uses the cadences of the oral storytelling traditions of Kenya to create a remarkable coming-of-age narrative. Aisha’s sea adventure, evoking memories of Sinbad and Ulysses, is in a sense only a prequel, because when she returns, it is with the thirst for more knowledge. As the story flows, Bajaber offers strongly developed characters and recognizable family dynamics that root this fabulist tale in a cultural context. Bajaber’s debut novel, winner of the first Graywolf Press African Fiction Prize, is imaginative with its personality-infused crows and goats and empathetic in its dramatization of challenging choices.
