Google Doodle honours Kenyan novelist Margaret Ogola
Kenyan writer Dr Margaret Ogola, whose debut novel ‘The River and the Source’ won awards around the globe, was on Wednesday honoured by Google with a doodle.
Dr Ogola died in September 2011. She would have been 60 today.
Her debut novel followed four generations of Kenyan women in a rapidly changing country and society.
“Happy to celebrate Kenyan award-winning author, activist and doctor, the late Dr Margaret Ogola, author of The River and the Source,” wrote Goggle.
Happy to celebrate Kenyan award-winning author, activist and doctor, the late Dr Margaret Ogola, author of The River and the Source. Which is your favourite quote from the book? #RememberingMargaretOgola #GoogleDoodle pic.twitter.com/jOpphTCkLZ
— Google in Africa (@googleafrica) June 12, 2019
Dr Ogola won the 1995 Commonwealth Writer’s Prize for the Best First Book in Africa.
What many didn’t know is that Dr Ogola was not a full time writer, but a pediatrician, the medical director of Cottolengo Hospice for HIV/Aids orphans.
She burst into the Kenyan literary scene in the mid-1990s, and before her demise in September 2011, she had also written ‘I Swear by Apollo’ and ‘Place of Destiny’
‘The River and the Source’ was a KCSE set book for many years. It has been translated into several languages, including Italian, Lithuanian and Spanish.