Sankofa: A Novel

Written by Chibundu Onuzo

Narrated by Sara Powell

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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tantor Media, Inc
• Release date: Oct 5, 2021
• ISBN: 9781666153408

Reviews for Sankofa

[Jessica Burnett · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

It resonates in unexpected ways. The protagonist is boring and repetitive at times and very frustrating, but there may be hope for her yet

[margaret leon · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Wonderful story…well narrated with great voices and accents….made you feel like you were with Anna

[Chelsea · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Slow and gentle slice of life at first. Eventually filled with contradictions paradoxes and conflicts. Bravery to overcome. Courage to heal.

[Robin Herbert · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Exquisite story, beautifully written and highly readable.
A middle aged biracial woman in London, raised by a single mother, embarks on a journey of discovery to learn about her long missing African father, who'd gone from being a radical African student in London to overthrowing the colonialist rule of his small African country to being its leader. In the process, she learns about her own middle aged life and comes to a better understanding of the complexities of her now deposed, complicated father.

[Teri Gillams · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Loved this story of culture, family and finding that which was yet to be discovered!

[Ann G Miller-Sobel · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Excellently woven tale of a woman’s discovery of a father she never knew. Then she discovers herself in the journey.

[Julie Mishol · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Interesting story of a woman searching for her father and finding herself

[mbmackay · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The author's third book, and my third read. And it's a good read - interesting storyline and has the reader thinking about the lives of others.

[muffinbutt1027 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I read through this one in a day (more like half a day, really). However the ease of reading it wasn't because it was simple, but because the narrative was both compelling and quiet and you moved through it with ease. There was a sense of urgency that kept you going, but also held you steady.

Anna Bain grew up in London with a white single mom - and herself of mixed race. The only thing she knew of her father was his name. Upon her mother's death she discovers her father's diary hidden in her mother's things and realizes he is more than just a man who is her biological relative - he is a wealthy, revered and controversial West African leader. This is the story of how she seeks him out and tries to make peace with who she is and who he ultimately chose to be and also how the narratives we tell ourselves are not always honest.

[anniik_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

TW/CW: Family death, some violence, racism, racist language, talk of eating disorders, divorce, adultery

REVIEW: I enjoyed this book. It is not a long book, and the lovely writing is quite engaging and moves quickly.

Sankofa is the story of a middle-age woman who discovers her unknown father’s journals after the death of her mother. After reading them and obsessing over the man her father was, she travels to Africa to meet him for the first time, and during her visit comes to understand herself better as well.

Things I liked about this book –

The writing. It drew you in and you came to care about the characters.
The story. It was interesting and unique.
The ending. I’ll not leave any spoilers here, but I liked how it kind of ended in the middle…the same as Anna’s identity.

Things I didn’t like about this book –

The beginning. I was really thrown off by the way the book just…started without any real introduction, just jumping into everything in the first couple pages. It was a bit off-putting at first.

All in all, I really enjoyed this book and would definitely recommend it.

[jscape2000 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A delightful slow burn that dances from the implausible to the unbelievable to the magical and back again. It is a story of a woman learning to allow herself to imagine, and how often she walks into walls she should be able to see. If I allow myself one complaint, it is that Anna is at times blindingly oblivious to her own faults in service of the plot. But that is, perhaps, the core of her development.

[castlelass · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Anna Bain Graham, a forty-something mixed-race British woman, grew up in England with her mother and never knew her father. Anna is in the midst of her own personal crisis. She and her husband are estranged due to his infidelity, and she is contemplating divorce. Upon her mother’s death, she discovers her father’s diary and goes in search of him. Her search takes her to West Africa, where she learns more about her father and herself.

This novel explores race, belonging, identity, and different forms of power. It is told in first person by protagonist Anna. The first half is dedicated to the discovery of the diary and figuring out how to find her father. The pace picks up in the second half when she arrives in Bamana.

Onuzo does a marvelous job of creating the fictional African country, complete with culture and political backstory. She examines how revolutionary ideals can devolve into corruption. She explores the way identity can become fractured. In Anna’s case, she has denied her personal power, allowing herself to be directed by circumstances and the will of others. Her trip to Africa helps her come to terms with the past. There is a segment that veers into the surreal, which did not quite fit with the rest of the story, but overall, I enjoyed it very much.

[bookczuk · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

2022 pandemic read. Interesting book dipping into so many different issues. What if you are a middle aged woman, who never knew her father, only the bare minimum about him, and stumble upon information that leads you to him. Do share this with your soon-to be ex husband, and your daughter? Do you travel to me your biological father?
Add in what if you were raised by your mother, a white woman in England, and your father is from Africa? Plus he may be the not so benevolent ruler of a country?
Really interesting book, exploring a lot of issues with a good writing and a deft touch.

[toric90 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This was so beautiful to listen to on audio. I loved the self and physical journey that this main character, Anna, goes on. The story could have probably gone a little deeper into some aspects and towards the end it was a bit of an emotional rollercoaster but I would assume meeting your father for the first time probably is already an emotional rollercoaster itself. I really agree with the quote that this is "a story for anyone who has ever gone looking for a clear identity or home, and found something more complex in its place." It really reads as a glimpse into Anna's life for this small amount of time but during a very monumental moment and identity development. But because it reads like you are following Anna's life, there isn't a pretty little ending that gives you closure and there is a lot of life interjections that mirror what would happen in life but don't necessarily move anything forward in the plot. Would purchase and would reread.

[adonisguilfoyle · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Another recommendation from Between the Covers (BBC2), this one a success! I was absolutely captivated by the story, about a woman of dual heritage (Welsh mother, African father) who leaves the confines of her middle-aged life in London and travels alone to West Africa after discovering her father's diaries hidden in her late mother's effects.

Anna Graham has only ever known one half of her family history, a black child growing up in a white family who could neither protect nor prepare her for the racism faced by multiracial children in 1970s London. Now in her fifties, separated from her husband and with a grown but distant daughter, Anna is once again forced to question her identity. When her mother dies and Anna is left to sort through her personal papers, she discovers a diary written in 1969 by Francis Aggrey, her West African father. After reading her young father's account of racist attacks in London and his increasing political fervour, Anna feels that she has found a key to her heritage. She also learns from a scrapbook of newscuttings that Francis returned to his African roots and gained independence for his country, Banama, becoming the first prime minister. Now called Kofi Adjei, Anna's father is still alive and Anna is determined to meet him and explore the missing half of her ethnic origins.

Anna is a sympathetic narrator, gathering strength from her physical and spiritual journey to Africa. I could empathise with her quest to find out more about her father, never having known my own, and how biological inheritance is still important even when raised in a loving family: What did I want from him? What do children want from absent fathers? It was too late for any encounters with Francis Aggrey to be formative. I was too much of an adult for him to erase the confusion of my childhood. And yet, if I truly believed this, why was I here? Her first meeting with Francis/Kofi is painful to read but of course he relents and the story is shared between Anna and her new family – no half brother or sisters, because ‘we don’t have that in Africa’.

I also loved the meaning of the title, Sankofa, which is represented by a bird flying forward while facing backwards – or go back to your past to move on. Anna has to make sense of her father’s history and how he has changed from the young man in the diary to figure out what she wants from her own life, her marriage and her nationality. The ending was both surprising but also very fitting – I was scared for Anna at one point, only to realise that she actually needed shaking up!

Relatable characters and a heart-warming story of self-discovery. Recommended! (I'm also excited to discover that the author has written an African take on Romeo and Juliet, which I have added to my wishlist!)

[thesmellofbooks · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I haven’t read a book this quickly in a long time. I just always wanted to know what was happening next. Very distracting!

The protagonist, Anna, is the mixed race daughter of a white Welsh mother. She has never met her father and knows almost nothing about him. When her mother dies Anna discovers a journal written by her father when he was an exchange student from a small African country, living in London.

I hate to give away surprises from a novel so I will just say that after much consideration she tries to find out about her father with the hope of meeting him. She has grown up in a racist country, raised by a mother and grandfather who don’t understand what she is facing and so can’t support her in all the ways she needs. As an adult, she finds herself at a turning point in her life where the relationships she has are not satisfactory, including the one with her self.

Anna‘s journey is never straightforward. She is in turns extremely passive and rudely confrontational. There are times when I found myself losing sympathy for her, and yet the reality is that when we are struggling with these issues we are not always clear thinking, fair, or wise.

I like Sankofa very much. I like the unpeeling of Anna‘s psyche and the slow revelation of her roots. I love watching her in her fathers world, as she grapples with more than she can understand.

[brangwinn · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

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.

[mtrumbo_2 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A gentle novel about about a middle-aged woman debating whether to divorce her philandering, but remorseful, husband only to find out the father she never knew is living and a former President of a small African nation. While the book is rather slow paced, I did find myself strangely unable to put it down - a slightly different take on a mid life crisis. I felt like there could have a bit more to the story; however, I loved Onuzo's prose and absolutely plan to read them again. Thank you to NetGalley for the chance to read and review this book!

[ridgewaygirl · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

There are a number of novels out in the past few years in which someone returns/visits for the first time the African country of their birth/their parents/their ancestors. This one stands apart from the rest both in the quality of the writing and in how it refuses to follow any expected path.

Anna is separated and her Welsh mother's death has unsettled her. She never met her father, a student who returned home to Africa before she was born. Clearing out her mother's things, she finds his diary from his time in London and decides to find him. What she finds out about him is that his life was far from ordinary and while she felt she got to know who he was from his account of being a Black man in England during Enoch Powell's heyday, who his is now is a far different person.

Traveling to a small country on the west coast of Africa, Anna is out of her element. Always made to feel like an outsider in England, she's surprised to find that she's seen as an outsider in Africa, too. Her father is elusive and placed so far outside of what she's used to, Anna behaves in ways that surprise her.

This is a novel that kept turning in directions I didn't expect and I loved how nuanced and complex Onuzo allowed the story to become. There are no easy solutions or correct choices here, just the ones made by fallible human beings. And what looks like good from one angle, is not necessarily good from the other side. I'm eager to read this author's previous novels.

[jetangen4571 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

fiction, family-dynamics, cultural-exploration, cultural-heritage, London, West Africa*****

Anna is searching for her roots in a land where her heritage does not make some people shame her with their careless inhumanity. An only child raised by her British mother and whose African father never even knew of her, Anna is in deep distress at 48 when her mother dies of a brain cancer and she is also in the middle of a divorce which is encouraged by her own daughter. After finding and reading the journals written by her father before he left to go back to his homeland, she goes there on a quest to find him. And herself. Very moving and well written but difficult to face the thoughtless cruelty of others.
I requested and received a free temporary ebook copy from Catapult via NetGalley, Thank you!

[bookmuse56 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Sankofa is novel beautifully, wisely, and masterly told as a biracial woman explores the question, “Who am I?”.

As forty-eight year old recently separated Anna is sorting through her recently deceased Welsh mother’s flat, she discovers a journal written by her unknown West African father. Until this point, the only information her mother shared about father was his name, Francis Aggrey. While reading this poignant journal describing the scathing racial environment of 1970s London, Anna forms an image of father in her mind and bonds with him as she too has experienced racial discrimination and taunts. With her husband begging for a martial reconciliation and her grown daughter pressing her towards divorce, Anna decides to take a time out for herself and search for her father, hoping he is still alive so they can meet.

I so enjoyed this fresh take on the midlife crisis trope combined with the issues of personal, family, and national identity. Onuzo writes with a gentle graceful fluidity as the storyline explores what too often is seen as “straightforward” issues and reveals the complex and often complicated layers that not only make-up our history of ourselves but the history that others assume about us. Never preachy but the characters have flaws like most of us, but the goodness or the badness is often dependent on the eyes making the judgment.

This is the third novel, I have read by the author, and I look forward to her future work.

Overall, for me this is an engaging and engrossing sharply observed read. I recommend this book to those who enjoy the allure of a mystery with the emotional depth of compelling fiction.

I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.