Chika Unigwe's 6 favorite books

Chika Unigwe was born in Nigeria and now lives in Belgium. She was a 2008 UNESCO-Aschberg fellow and a 2009 Rockefeller Foundation fellow (at the Bellagio Center), and she holds a Ph.D. from the University of Leiden. She is the recipient of several awards for her writing, including first prize in the 2003 BBC Short Story Competition and a Commonwealth Short Story Competition award. In 2004 she was shortlisted for the Caine prize for African Writing. Her stories have been on BBC World Service and Radio Nigeria. Her second novel, On Black Sisters' Street, is now available in the U.S.

One of her six favorite books, as told to The Week magazine:

Blonde Roots by Bernardine Evaristo

An intelligent, lyrical reimagining of the slave trade by one of the most unusual writers of our time. Evaristo’s thought-provoking novel presents a world in which white Europeans are enslaved by black Africans. It challenges fundamental perceptions of race and culture by constantly asking “what if?”

Read about another book on the list.

The Page 69 Test: Bernardine Evaristo's Blonde Roots.

Chika Unigwe's On Black Sisters' Street is one of E. C. Osondu's top ten immigrants' tales.

--Marshal Zeringue