Celebrated Kenyan Author, Dr. Margaret Ogola, Honored With Google Doodle
The author of the seminal novel "The River and the Source" is remembered on what would have been her 61st birthday.
Kenyan author, activist, and doctor Margaret Ogola is the latest African icon to be commemorated with a Google Doodle.
Google Africa unveiled the design, which features a painted portrait of the author admits a purple sunset, on Wednesday, June 12 to mark what would have been the novelist's 61st birthday.
The doodle appears on the Google homepage in Kenya. Google In Africa shared the image on their Twitter, asking followers to share their favorite quotes from her seminal novel The River and the Source.
Born in Asembo, Kenya in 1958, Dr. Ogola released her first novel, The River and the Source, in 1995. The internationally renowned book told the stories of four generations of Kenyan women as they country experienced rapid social, political and economic change.
The book won both the Jomo Kenyatta Prize for Literature and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book in Africa in the year of its release. It also became part of Kenyan school curriculum.
The award-winning novelist was also a practicing pediatrician who worked closely with orphans affected by HIV and AIDS as the medical director of the Cottolengo Hospice in Nairobi. She received the Families Award for Humanitarian Service from the World Congress of Families for her services.
"Local doodles provide a way for Google to connect with Kenyans about what matters to them and to help celebrate the important moments," said Dorothy Ooko, head of communications and public affairs, SSA. "We celebrated Wangari Maathai and today we're celebrating a literary figure, Dr. Margaret Ogola."
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