This story of a mixed-race Bamanian-Brit comes at an opportune time. The novel begins when Anna handily finds the clandestine journal of her long-lost father, Francis Aggrey, a find that sets in a motion a propulsive plot in her detective-like search for her paternal heritage. Her husband, Robert, has just cheated on her with a Black woman who is far more vivacious and her white-passing daughter, Rose, is a grown-up with a glamorous life to tend to. One obvious way to describe her predicament is as a mixed-race take on the notorious midlife crisis.
Moving from Britain to Bamana, a fictional country that is a Western African medley largely modelled on modern day Ghana, Sankofa is the story of a mixed-race woman, Anna, and her search for identity. Sankofa captures the spirit of the Akan word, meaning retrieval or more literally “it is not taboo to fetch what is at risk of being left behind,” through the heartwarming midlife story of a mixed-race woman finally finding belonging. The winner of the Betty Trask Award hits the mark once again.įollowing The Spider King’s Daughter and Welcome to Lagos, Sankofa is Chibundu Onuzo’s third novel and signals a departure from her prior focus on Lagosian life.
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