Sankofa: A Novel

by Chibundu Onuzo

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

A beautifully paced novel that explores the complexities and complications of family relationships, Sankofa is a triumph. Anna's search for identity is an enjoyable, surprising, and oftentimes funny exploration into the cultures and the people that influence who we become. Onuzo's career will be one to watch.

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781646220847
Publisher:	Catapult
Publication date:	10/05/2021
Sold by:	Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format:	eBook
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	104,009
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

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.

Editorial Reviews

08/16/2021

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.)

Publishers Weekly

TODAY, 1 of 10 Books to Read This Holiday Season
Essence, A Best New Winter Read
A Time Best Book of the Year
An Amazon Best Book of the Year
An Entertainment Weekly Must Read of the Month

“Onuzo, who was born in Lagos and lives in London, brings this fictional country and its ex-dictator to life with economy, precision and satirical bite . . . Part of the novel’s delight lies in Onuzo’s paralleling of stories: Francis Aggrey’s political coming-of-age, documented through excerpts from his journal, runs alongside Anna’s own transformation from suburban housewife to global citizen . . . With her anagrammatic take on the experience of the African diaspora, Onuzo’s sneakily breezy, highly entertaining novel leaves the reader rethinking familiar narratives of colonization, inheritance and liberation.” —Bliss Broyard, The New York Times Book Review

"A stark, beautifully and concisely written narrative about a woman who has lost her mother, split up from her husband and dealt with the growing up of her only daughter who decides to unpack her past in more ways than one." —Good Morning America

“Uniquely layered and lovingly written.” —Karla Strand, Ms. Magazine

“Chibundu Onuzo offers a stirring narrative about family, our capacity to change and the need to belong.” —Annabel Gutterman, TIME

“Beautifully written, this is a literary love story from a daughter to a father—and shows the disappointment that can come with that relationship.” —Zibby Owens, Katie Couric Media

“In Bamana, a fictionalized West African country, Onuzo is probably at her narrative best. We . . . find ourselves in a setting that fires up the senses and offers up an opportunity for us to get to know Anna better . . . Sankofa means not only to retrieve but also to do so in the spirit of taking something good from the past to better the future. Like her protagonist, the writer Onuzo boldly attempts this in her new novel.” —Angela Ajayi, Minneapolis Star Tribune

“With wit, humor, and heart, Onuzo spins a page-turner centered on a woman in search of her past . . . Taking on questions of race, belonging and heritage, Onuzo writes with gusto and beautifully illuminates what Sankofa means: ‘a mythical bird . . . it flies forward with its head facing back.’” —Al Woodworth, Amazon Book Review

“Onuzo’s clean prose highlights the novel’s hopeful contours.” —Estelle Tang, BuzzFeed

"Sankofa is a vivid exploration of finding one’s place in the world, while confronting the demons brought on by our parentage." —Sarah Stiefvater, PureWow

“This is a special book that deploys every tool at its disposal to explore the big questions and put its characters (especially its lead) through the wringer. Anna is a fully realized character with all of the flaws, contradictions, and above all charms that that implies. And through her journey of discovery . . . the curious reader may just come away with their own new sense of self-knowledge and a greater awareness of the powerful grip the past can hold on the present.” —Book of the Month

“A beautifully paced novel that explores the complexities and complications of family relationships, Sankofa is a triumph . . . Onuzo’s career will be one to watch.” —B&N Reads

"Sankofa marks another formidable leap forward with this story of a young woman searching for the father she never knew that will keep readers guessing up until the very end." —Chicago Review of Books

"Masterful . . . Any person who is bi-racial and/or part of an ethnic diaspora will relate to Anna's struggle on a deeply personal level . . . A journey of identity and belonging unlike anything I've ever read before." —Shelf Unbound

"[A] riveting, gracefully spare novel of self-discovery . . . Onuzo shows that making peace with the past can be a starting point toward self-acceptance, and that imperfect families can find common ground in unexpected ways." —Shelf Awareness (starred review)

“An engagingly written journey of self-discovery.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Spellbinding . . . Onuzu’s spare style elegantly cuts to the core of her themes. The balancing of Anna’s soul-searching with her thrilling discoveries makes for a satisfying endeavor.” —Publishers Weekly

“Unscrupulous politicians, irresponsible journalism, and the yawning gap between rich and poor feel deeply personal as Anna’s journey unfolds . . . Fresh and new. ” —Library Journal

“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 . . . 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.” —Michael Donkar, The Guardian

From the Publisher

08/01/2021

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

Library Journal

2021-07-28
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.

Kirkus Reviews