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Summary
Summary
A REESE'S BOOK CLUB PICK | AN AMAZON BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
"A beautiful exploration of the often complex parameters of freedom, prejudice, and individual sense of self. Chibundu Onuzo has written a captivating story about a mixed-race British woman who goes in search of the West African father she never knew . . . [A] beautiful book about a woman brave enough to discover her true identity." --Reese Witherspoon
"Onuzo's sneakily breezy, highly entertaining novel leaves the reader rethinking familiar narratives of colonization, inheritance and liberation." -- The New York Times Book Review
Named a Best Book of the Month by Entertainment Weekly , Harper's Bazaar , and Time * Named a Most Anticipated Book of the Month by Goodreads , PopSugar , PureWow , LitHub , Minneapolis Star-Tribune , and Buzzfeed
A woman wondering who she really is goes in search of a father she never knew--only to find something far more complicated than she ever expected--in this "stirring narrative about family, our capacity to change and the need to belong" ( Time ).
Anna is at a stage of her life when she's beginning to wonder who she really is. In her 40s, she has separated from her husband, her daughter is all grown up, and her mother--the only parent who raised her--is dead.
Searching through her mother's belongings one day, Anna finds clues about the African father she never knew. His student diaries chronicle his involvement in radical politics in 1970s London. Anna discovers that he eventually became the president--some would say dictator--of a small nation in West Africa. And he is still alive...
When Anna decides to track her father down, a journey begins that is disarmingly moving, funny, and fascinating. Like the metaphorical bird that gives the novel its name, Sankofa expresses the importance of reaching back to knowledge gained in the past and bringing it into the present to address universal questions of race and belonging, the overseas experience for the African diaspora, and the search for a family's hidden roots.
Examining freedom, prejudice, and personal and public inheritance, Sankofa is a story for anyone who has ever gone looking for a clear identity or home, and found something more complex in its place.
Author Notes
Chibundu Onuzo was born in Lagos, Nigeria and lives in London. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and regular contributor to The Guardian, she is the winner of a Betty Trask Award, has been shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize, the Commonwealth Book Prize, and the RSL Encore Award, and has been longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize and Etisalat Literature Prize. She is the author of Welcome to Lagos , and Sankofa is her third novel.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
A middle-aged, mixed-race woman struggles with several crises in Nigerian writer Onuzu's spellbinding latest (after Welcome to Lagos). Anna Bain is a 46-year-old Londoner whose mother, Bronwen, has just died, whose husband has been unfaithful, and who has been leading a lackluster life as a housewife. Following her white mother's funeral, she stumbles upon a diary written in the 1960s by her West African father, Francis Aggrey, hidden in a trunk. Francis left London before Anna's birth, and Bronwen raised her. Anna learns that her father was an international student who had boarded with Bronwen's family and became part of a group of West African students agitating for freedom from colonial rule. After leaving London, Aggrey became a guerrilla fighter, independence leader, and eventually the first president of Bamana following independence. Anna then finds Francis's memoir (published under his new name, Kofi Adjei) in a university archive, meets with his biographer in Edinburgh, and eventually meets Kofi in Bamana, where she seeks to resolve her conflicts over her racial and cultural identity. Onuzu's spare style elegantly cuts to the core of her themes ("I felt at peace, as if indeed two warring streams had finally merged," Anna reflects). The balancing of Anna's soul-searching with her thrilling discoveries makes for a satisfying endeavor. Agent: Georgina Capel, Georgina Capel Assoc. (Oct.)
Guardian Review
The difficult experience of feeling stuck between seemingly irreconcilable states is at the core of Chibundu Onuzo's accomplished third novel. The mixed racial heritage of Sankofa's fiftysomething protagonist, Anna Bain, is the most powerful manifestation of this. As a Welsh-Bamanian (Bamana is Onuzo's fictional west African state), London-based Anna is made to constantly confront notions of difference and belonging. Anna, who was raised by her white mother, remembers that, as a teenager, white friends were desperate to touch her hair, wanted to know "if food tasted different with thicker lips". In the early years of motherhood, she was once assumed to be the nanny of her white-passing daughter, Rose. The novel opens with "aloof" Anna stuck at a particularly bewildering kind of existential crossroads. After more than 20 years of marriage, throughout which she has kept a lid on her artistic ambitions, she has separated from her unfaithful husband. Her relationship with her high-flying daughter is in flux. Most poignantly, Anna's mother has just passed away. In her mother's belongings, Anna uncovers a diary, written in the late 1960s, belonging to Francis Aggrey. Aggrey was a student from the fictional Diamond Coast; while studying in London, he became part of a set of young African scholars agitating for their native countries' freedom from colonial rule. Through excerpts from these diaries, the plot rapidly delivers us to Anna's discovery that Aggrey is her father. After his studies, Aggrey returned to his homeland. There he transformed himself into a revolutionary who became the first president of the newly independent Bamana - a country that bears more than a passing resemblance to Ghana. The novel briskly tracks Anna's wrestling with feelings of abandonment and loss, and follows her literal and figurative journey to try to connect with her father. In her acknowledgments, Onuzo identifies Rachel Cusk's work as providing her with inspiration. Both the portrayal of a coolly distant protagonist who closely controls her emotions and the artfully spare sentences demonstrate Cusk's influence on this lean novel. While the uncluttered style is admirable, at times it leads to some of the book's potentially complex messages about identity landing in a slightly heavy-handed manner. However, the slick pacing and unpredictable developments - especially in the depiction of Anna's enigmatic father - keep the reader alert right up to the novel's exhilarating ending. Here, though some might find the tonal shift jarring, Onuzo lifts the narrative into an entirely unexpected space. She shows that the healing of fractures and a desire for wholeness can be achieved in the most unexpected of places.
Kirkus Review
A biracial British woman begins a quest to find her African father. Anna Bain was raised in London by a single White mother, never knowing her African-born Black father. Now she's going through a kind of midlife transition: She's separated from her White husband, her daughter is grown, and her mother has just died. When she discovers her long-missing father's diary among her mother's effects, Anna sees an opportunity to reconnect with her African heritage. Her father, Francis Aggrey, was an international student in London when he met her mother, Bronwen Bain, in 1969. Francis and Bronwen began a passionate affair, but Francis returned home without ever realizing the Welsh teenager was pregnant. Anna becomes something of a detective, taking the diary to a renowned professor in Edinburgh for authentication and tracking down people mentioned in it. Eventually, she discovers that her father changed his name to Kofi Adjei and was later elected prime minister of the newly formed (fictional) country of Bamana. Anna's journey to Bamana to meet her father tests her mettle after decades of complacency as a self-described housewife dependent on her husband to make the decisions in their comfortable life. Some plot twists veer toward the melodramatic--Anna is asked to help a girl who's been accused of witchcraft; she has an encounter with corrupt police--and seem designed to explain stereotypes about African culture to Western readers. Anna's experiences growing up in Britain as a woman of color are also underexplored. However, Francis Aggrey/Kofi Adjei is a fantastic, charismatic character, and every scene he's in crackles with energy. The title refers to a mythical bird that "flies forwards with its head facing back," a potent symbol for Anna, who must learn to embrace the new opportunities that come with change. An engagingly written journey of self-discovery. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
After the death of her Welsh mother, Anna Graham, whose own daughter is grown, stumbles on a diary written by her father, an African named Francis Aggrey. Francis was a student in London in the 1960s when he met Anna's mom. The diary consumes Anna. She reads about the racism that her father faced and his growing belief in the need to eradicate the stain of colonialism. Anna learns that Francis returned to Africa before he knew of her existence. He reinvented himself as Kofi Adjei, and became the first prime minister of a new country, Bamana. Kofi was a dictator, yet Anna still hopes for closure as she travels to meet him. Onuzo (Welcome to Lagos, 2017) paints a blocky portrait of Anna and her complex relationships. Additional plotlines lack texture, and Anna's seesawing feelings for her father can be frustrating. Kofi tells her that the sankofa is a mythical bird that "flies forwards with its head facing back. It's a poetic image but it cannot work in real life." Anna is earnest, but her father has a point.
Library Journal Review
Six months after her mother's death, Anna Bain delves into her mom's old brass trunk and meets her father for the first time. Francis Aggrey's diary details his years in London, where he studied, dabbled in African politics, and fell for Anna's mother, Bronwyn. He returned home to Bamana in West Africa before he learned of the pregnancy. As a biracial child raised by a white mother who dismissed the racially motivated slights that her daughter endured on the streets, in shops, and at school, Anna recognizes in her father a kindred spirit and wonders again why her mother never wrote to Francis to tell him of their child. Research leads Anna to discover that her father, now named Kofi Adjei, had become the prime minister, then controversial president of Bamana. At a crossroads, an empty nester in the process of divorce, Anna travels to West Africa in search of her roots, but can she distinguish the mythic Francis from the reality of Kofi? VERDICT Themes that Onuzo visited in 2018's Welcome to Lagos, including unscrupulous politicians, irresponsible journalism, and the yawning gap between rich and poor, feel deeply personal as Anna's journey unfolds. Though the quest for identity has become a conventional staple of contemporary fiction, it feels fresh and new in Onuzo's capable hands.--Sally Bissell, formerly at Lee Cty. Lib. Syst., Fort Myers, FL