Sankofa: A Novel
Oct 2021 · Catapult
4.1star
17 reviewsreport
Ebook
304
Pages
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About this ebook
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.
“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.
Ratings and reviews
4.1
17 reviews
Larry Eshelman
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August 31, 2024
In Nigeria you sometimes hear the aphorism, “East or West, home is best”; of course, implying that Africa is the best of all places in the world to call home. And, although this may seem intuitive to an indigenous inhabitant of West Africa, the novel points out that it is far from being so for the millions of souls who are part of the African diaspora—especially for those who are now of mixed ancestry. To emphasize this dichotomy, Chibundu Onuzo uses the symbol of the Sankofa (a bird who goes forward while looking backwards) as a trope by which she explores the identity crises inherently faced by those who are trying to reconcile the extremes of being a part of two different worlds. Although a work of fiction, it should be noted that if you can find Ghana on the map, and know who Kwame Nkrumah was, you can examine the novel's sub-dialogue which revolves around the relevance (or some would say paradox), as to why certain founding fathers of postcolonial West African states brought about both independence from, but also an attachment to the East-West cultural divide.
Rene Doyle
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October 22, 2021
My beef with this review page is that none of the reviews can be seen in full so in other words useless. Add no book jacket blurb with a description of what the book is about [being that there is millions of books to read and noway to get to then in ones life time]; I personally would like some reason other then a Reese Witherspoon recomandation. I want a bit of what the book genre is and some inkling of storyline. Take that in advisory to this site and make changes because scores of people buy books based on any and everything but Witherspoon. Do that and the books my get more sales. Sincerely, René Doyle
15 people found this review helpful
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.
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