Advanced
Error loading page.
Try refreshing the page. If that doesn't work, there may be a network issue, and you can use our self test page to see what's preventing the page from loading.
Learn more about possible network issues or contact support for more help.
Title details for Sankofa by Chibundu Onuzo - Available

Sankofa

A Novel

by Chibundu Onuzo
Sara Powell
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
Borrow Listen to a sample Listen to a sample
1 of 1 copy available
The exhilarating story of a mixed-race woman who goes in search of the African father she never knew.
After years of being a daughter, a wife, and a mother, Anna finally has the time to wonder who she really is. But the only person who can tell her—her mother, the only parent who raised her—is dead.
Searching through her mother's belongings one day, Anna uncovers a few clues about her father, whom she never knew. Student diaries chronicle his involvement in radical politics in 1970s London, involvement that eventually led him to return to Africa, where he 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. It raises universal questions of race and belonging, the overseas experience for the African diaspora, and the search for a family's hidden roots. Masterful in its examination of 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.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    October 5, 2021

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781666153415
      • File size: 260601 KB
      • Duration: 09:02:55

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      August 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.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

Loading