MixedStar TribuneChibundu Onuzo\'s third novel, Sankofa, opens in a voice and style that are unfamiliar — at least to this reader of her previous novels. The writing is clipped and mostly stripped of excess ... A lingering directness to the prose advances the plot but does little to generate enough nuance and literary heft in the novel ... In Bamana, a fictionalized West African country, Onuzo is probably at her narrative best. We leave behind a briskly examined life in dull, racist England and find ourselves in a setting that fires up the senses ... For the Akan people of Ghana, \'sankofa\' means not only to retrieve but also to do so in the spirit of taking something good from the past to better the future. Like her protagonist, the writer Onuzo boldly attempts this in her new novel, to some mixed results.
