LOVED. This was a strange and engaging little book that I could not put down. Very different but in ways I cannot explain. Just loved the characters. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher!

I had not heard of Chibundu Onuzo before, but I will not forget her now. Sankofa is an excellent combination of travel narrative, personal growth story, and family drama.

After her mother’s death and a separation from her unfaithful husband, Anna, the narrator, leaves her home in London to seek out her father in the constructed African country of Bamana. All of the usual pieces of a “you are the father” story fall into place, but the cultural backdrop and Onuzo’s convincing character development keep the work from becoming a daytime talk-show event. The commentary on colonialism and the complexity of post-colonial rebuilding gives the work its true depth and substance. In a less skilled hand, all of the elements could easily deconstruct; instead, we are left with a genuine page-turner that is both personally engaging and globally impactful.

Thank you to Chibundu Onuzo, Catapult, and NetGalley for an advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

Anna's unmoored character at the start of this novel was so incredibly moving. I could not look away from her quest to learn more about her roots and identity. This is the meaning of the title and is now a word I'll never forget.

5 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
I would definitely be recommending this book to readers on my Instagram bookstagram account.

I really Like this story of the early years as a student of the main character's father to fix dictator days in an African country. Anna, the daughter is easy to like and root for and the added complexity of her pending divorce and relationship with her own daughter add dimension to the character. The mixed race identity of Anna and er daughter with complicated father daughter relationships dances the story. Goof on a peripheral level but even better as the sub plots deepen.

Copy provided by the publisher and NetGalley

Being orphaned when you are an older person is an odd experience. . .but no less an experience than that experienced by a younger person. Standing alone in the middle of your old age is weird as parents are absent except in your own head, partners have parted for all the reasons partners do, kids have moved on and "check in" but are gone nonethless. No one to supervise, no one overseeing you. The respect of friends, minding all the privacy rules are their own kind of pronouncement. In the echoes that live in the house with you, thoughts turn to the past. . . as it did with Anna. She began to wonder about that missing man in her life. Her father. Just imagine the wonder of it all when he turns out to be . . . .Alive.

An entirely different book springs up in the next sentence. A fateful turn in Anna's path has occurred. The read was entirely engaging from there to the end of the book. I recommend it for anyone who has found themselves on the path back home - way back home - in the late part of the day and don't know why. . .they are on their way to experience the spirit of Sankofa as it relates to them.

From Wikipedia:
Sankofa (pronounced SAHN-koh-fah) is a word in the Akan Twi and Fante languages of Ghana that translates to "retrieve" (literally "go back and get"; san - to return; ko - to go; fa - to fetch, to seek and take) and also refers to the Bono Adinkra symbol represented either with a stylized heart shape or by a bird with its head turned backwards while its feet face forward carrying a precious egg in its mouth. Sankofa is often associated with the proverb, “Se wo were fi na wosankofa a yenkyi," or “Sankofa w’onkyir” which translates as: "It is not wrong to go back for that which you have forgotten."[1][2] It implores for Africans to reach back into ancient history for traditions and customs that have been left behind.

In addition to being used on adinkra cloth in Ghana, the Sankofa heart is a common design on gates in the United States, particularly New York City. In Brooklyn, the Sankofa heart is commonly upside down on gates to Brownstone residential buildings.

The sankofa bird appears frequently in traditional Akan art, and has also been adopted as an important symbol in an African-American and African Diaspora context to represent the need to reflect on the past to build a successful future. It is one of the most widely dispersed adinkra symbols, appearing in modern jewelry, tattoos, and clothing.

A Sincere Thanks to Chibundu Onuzo, Catapult and NetGalley for an ARC to read and review.
#Sankofa #NetGalley

Sankofa by Chibundu Onuzo was a beautiful book written about a daughter looking and finding her father. Great read!!

Sankofa is a simple, beautifully written book that follows a 48-year-old mixed-race woman who goes on a journey to find her father, and herself, following the death of her mother.

Anna Bain, is at a weird place in her life. Her adult daughter is thriving in life but also suffering from an eating disorder. And she's separated from her husband, who cheated on her, but very much wants to get back together with her.

Anna was born in the 60s to a Welsh mother and a West African father, who met in London and had a steamy affair. Anna's father, Francis Aggrey, left before knowing of Anna's existence and as a result, she never meets him. Francis Aggrey ends up becoming a freedom fighter then president of a small country in West Africa called Bamana.

While going through her mother's things, following her death, Anna finds her father's journal, and for the first time in her life, she begins to know details about who he is and becomes overcome with finding and meeting him.

The book follows her journey as she travels to get the answers she needs in order to move forward and find herself.

There are so many things I can say about this book. It was tender, it was real and it provided insight into a woman's search for herself and belonging. The ending was so beautiful.

Thanks to Netgalley and Catapult for the ebook. Anna lives in London and is separated from her husband, not as close to her grown daughter as she would like to be and is now clearing out her mother’s apartment after her recent death. Anna is feeling more than a little adrift when she finds a diary among her mother’s belongings. The diary is written by a young student from West Africa who was the father she never knew anything about. Not only has she now found her father, but he moved home and became president of his country and is still alive. Anna gathers her courage and flies to Africa to meet this man. Meeting him is not as easy as she thought, as she has to share the many with his existing family and a country that is split in their worship and hatred for the former ruler. A fascinating tale of what is family and the lengths people will go to try and find connections.

I really enjoyed this book. Anna is separated from her husband and contemplating divorce. A journal she found after her mother’s death is the journal of her father. Anna is raised by her mother in England. Her father was a student from a small country in Africa. Never having met her father, Anna decides to learn more about him and discovers he rose to the presidency of this small country. Going to meet him turns out to be much more than she expected as she learns what power means in Africa. The ending was not what I expected, but I applaud Anna’s decision.

This was fine. If you’re looking for an interesting, straight forward, relatively action-packed story - this might just be for you. I would have liked less telling and more showing, and found the “reveal” very predictable and not surprising whatsoever.

This luminous novel by astonishing Chibundu Onuzo dazzled my mind, my heart, my senses. The journey of Anna to Nana is a glorious tale beautifully told. Brava.

Anna has separated from her husband and is grieving for her mother. While going through her mother's belongings, she finds a journal from her absent father, who she discovers is an ex-president of a fictitious African country who met her mother as a student in London and returned to his country without knowing that she was pregnant. At a crossroads in her life, Anna decides to travel to his country to find him.

I was intrigued by the premise of this story, but the plot turned out to be very predictable. I would have liked a little more excitement and something unexpected to happen. I enjoyed the straightforward writing style and Anna's inner voice, but there were a lot of side characters who could have been developed more.

Title: Sankofa
Author: Chibundu Onuzo
Genre: Fiction
Rating: 4 out of 5

Anna is at a stage of her life when she's beginning to wonder who she really is. 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.

I enjoyed this more than I thought I would. Anna has spent most of her life stagnating, so it was good to see her finally take some sort of action. But, Anna still lets life happen to her, going along with a lot of things instead of speaking up or standing up for herself. Her father was kind of awful, a far cry from the man she got to know from his diary.

Chibundu Onuzo is from Nigeria. Sankofa is her new novel.

(Galley courtesy of Catapult in exchange for an honest review.)

A story of lost and found identity, Sankofa is surprising, heartfelt and powerful. Determined to track down the father she never knew after discovering his journals, Anna finds herself leaving the comfort of her life in England to travel to West Africa. Anna must reconcile the man on paper with the man she meets, uncovering her identity in the process.

Sankofa by Chibundu Onuzo is a beautifully written story about Anna, a woman in her 40s who is beginning a new chapter of her life.

Her mother just died, her grown daughter is always busy with work, she is in the middle of a divorce and she finds a diary from her father whom she never met. Turns out, her father became a leader of a small West African nation, perhaps even a dictator. Anna is curious about her father, especially since she was raised by a white mother and her family. Finding her father begins her journey of searching for information about the past while moving forward, a concept, in which the book gets its name. Sankofa is a metaphorical bird that is able to fly forward while looking back. Anna knows that to be able to move forward in her life she must understand her past.

Sankofa is a fantastic read filled with culture, family dynamics and social issues. The audio book is read beautifully which makes the culture come alive!

Thank you to NetGalley and Catapult for this copy in exchange for an honest review.

Onuzo's novel "Sankofa" is an intriguing novel about a woman in her late 40's who seems to be enduring an identity crisis after her husband has an affair and they separate, and she leaves her home in London in search of her father, a man she has never met, in a small nation in West Africa. I suppose this book could land on chick/women's lit lists, which would be a good sign that the lists involve novels that do more than soul search about their lovers. This novel takes place after our main character, Anna, finds the diaries of her mother's lover after she has died, so Anna can not ask her more questions about the identity of this man who she shared little info with, mainly because she got pregnant by this slightly older man who was rooming at their home as a guest, and for whatever reasons, neither stayed in touch and she was a teenaged mother, raising a child alone, and the lover, the father of Anna, becomes a dictator with a questionable past.

Anna's mother was White, her father Black, so there's a fair amount about being mixed race. I wish we would have seen the mother and daughter interact more, since she too is of mixed race, but passes as white (except for her muscular calves, according to the novel), but their main contact is via Skype once the mother has ventured out in search of her father, and Anna doesn't really reveal the truth about what is going on with her newfound family, partly to keep this new part of her life secret, partly to protect her father's privacy, and partly because she may be saving this juicy info for when they meet in person.

Anna sounds more like someone the age of her twenty-five year old daughter in this novel, and the daughter seems more maternal, more worried about her mother than her mother does about her daughter, except for her concerns about anorexia. The husband apologizes for his affair, wants to get back with his wife, and ends up being a minor figure in the novel.

The novel veers off a bit when Anna goes through the rite of passage that typically happens when girls are thirteen, but Anna seems to be missing having had a father figure all her life, and her father, a man who has raises four children, and seems to be a good father to them, somehow notices this, and brings her to the woman in the village who performs this somewhat hallucinogenic ceremony which transforms Anna, leaving her grounded with making huge life decisions.

The novel is well written, the plot moves along, the characters are interesting, and this is an enjoyable novel where one doesn't have to question how plausible every move is because this is fiction and this is the way the story rolls.

I’ve been in a bit of a reading slump, but Sankofa pulled me out of it! This book is written in a lovely and lyrical way and tells the story of a middle aged woman finding her father. This story reminded me that no matter how predictable life may seem, there can be unexpected surprises. Anna’s father is no one she could have imagined and she has to face her fears in many ways to get to know him. Sankofa is a story of family, identity, and courage. Thanks so much to the author and NetGalley for allowing me to read an advance copy.

Anna has always wondered about her dad, so when she finds his old diaries when cleaning out her mother’s belongings, she’s excited to finally have some clues to who he is. She goes on an adventure to track him down that leads her to West Africa where he has become president of a small nation.

There were some great themes in this book about family and belonging and identity, but at times they got lost in all of the side characters and subplots. I really enjoyed the parts after Anna has found her father where she is not only learning more about her family, but herself. I was sucked in because I needed to know how this would all play out, but at times I got confused by all of the side characters. It was a good read, but left me wanting a bit more.

Thank you to NetGalley and Catapult for the advanced copy.

Anna knows little about her father—not even if he were alive or dead—except that he came from Africa. However, when her mother, Bronwen, died, Anna finds two books under a false bottom of a chest—one is her father’s journal from his college days in London, the other a scrapbook of articles about him written after he returned home, became leader of a rebel group, was imprisoned, then won election to Prime Minister of Bamana, a position he held for thirty years.

As a student, her father, Francis Aggrey, became involved with far left groups which became more important than his studies. Bronwen’s radical sister, Caryl, met Francis through these groups, and he became a lodger in her father’s home where Bronwen was still living. Francis, though, returned to Bamana when his mother became ill, never to return to the UK.

Once he left London, he rechristened himself Kofi Adjei. Through his journal, Anna got to know her father Francis, and she related to his stories of racism, something her mother could never understand. She knows that Kofi is a different man, and she is not sure he’s someone she wants to meet.

Ultimately, with her marriage at a crossroads and her daughter independent, Anna decides to travel to Bamana with the help of Adrian Bennett, an academic who knew Kofi during his student days.

While Kofi first denies the possibility of paternity, he soon embraces Anna, pulling her into his life of extreme privilege, even as she glimpses the reality of ordinary citizens behind the curtain hiding poverty, oppression? and cruelty.

Anna craves connection with Kofi but to partake of his generosity requires submission to his rules and expectations, tolerance of his punishments, and navigation of family politics. She must decide if the relationship is worth the cost—or if there is even a decision to be made at all.

I really enjoyed this novel! Onuzo does a fabulous job creating the fictional country Bamana and its culture and political dynamics, and questioning how revolutionary ideals become corrupted in practice. More importantly, the novel turns on identity, especially when fractured (e.g., by geography or absent parents) and/or under pressure from a barrage of racism. And of course, there is the message of Sankofa, or learning from the past.

Recommended for readers who enjoy stories about the immigrant experience, family reconciliation, and identity.