Chibundu Onuzo’s latest novel,Sankofa, is all about change.
a small country in West Africa.
Anna heads off to the fictional Bamana to meet her father and rediscover herself.
Chibundu Onuzo is the author of ‘Sankofa’.Credit: Blayke Images; Catapult
What is the first thing ever that you remember writing?
I started writing my first novel when I was 10.
It was about a white American family that lived in California.
As a child growing up in Lagos, Nigeria, I watched a lot of American TV.
It made me believe that characters in “cool” and “interesting” stories had to be white.
I’m glad I grew out of that phase.
What is the last book that made you cry?
I don’t really cry when I read books.
MaybeQuo Vadis, by Henryk Sienkiewicz.
Which book is at the top of your current to-read list?
In Every Mirror She’s Black, by Lola Akinmade Akerstrom.
Where do you write?
In my living room.
I sit in an armchair and I use a lap desk I bought online.
I’d like one day to have an entire room in my house dedicated to writing.
I think more literal-minded people just call this a home office, but I prefer temple for the arts.
Which book made you a forever reader?
The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexander Dumas.
It’s the first thing I remember compulsively reading.
There are so many twists and turns in that book.
I also didn’t know Dumas was Black when I read him the first time round.
Maybe it’ll make a difference to how they cast the next screen adaptation of a Dumas novel.
What is a snack you couldn’t write without?
I’m always eating them.
If you could change one thing about any of your books, what would it be?
I look forward not backwards when I think about my writing.
What’s done is done.
What is your favorite part ofSankofa?
There’s a passage where Anna goes to visit a former slave-trading fort in West Africa.
She doesn’t quite know how to process the experience.
The site is both a tourist destination and a landmark for historical Black trauma.
I think the passage is both serious and funny, which I find a difficult balance to pull off.
What was the hardest plot point or character to write?
When Anna met her father for the first time.
The novel had been building up to this meeting for over a hundred pages.
She’d been wanting to meet him for 48 years.
Write a movie poster tag line for the book:
Based on the novel that sold 10 million copies.
