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Chika Unigwe
Chika Unigwe was born in Enugu, Nigeria, and now lives in Turnhout, Belgium,
with her husband and four children.
She holds a BA in English Language and Literature from the University of
Nigeria, Nsukka, and an MA from the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium.
She also holds a Ph.D. from the University of Leiden, The Netherlands,
having completed a thesis entitled "In the shadow of Ala. Igbo women writing
as an act of righting" in 2004.
Chika Unigwe is the author of fiction, poetry, articles and educational
material. She won the 2003 BBC Short Story Competition for her story
"Borrowed Smile", a Commonwealth Short Story Award for "Weathered Smiles"
and a Flemish literary prize for "De Smaak van Sneeuw", her first short
story written in Dutch. "The Secret", another of her short pieces, was
nominated for the 2004 Caine Prize. She was the recipient of a 2007
Unesco-Aschberg fellowship for creative writing, and of a 2009 Rockefeller
Foundation fellowship for creative writing.
Chika Unigwe's stories have been broadcast on BBC World Service, Radio
Nigeria, and other Commonwealth Radio Stations.
Her first novel, De Feniks, was published in Dutch by Meulenhoff / Manteau
in September 2005; it is the first book of fiction written by a Flemish
author of African origin. The story, set in Turnhout, explores themes such
as grief, illness and loneliness, subjects already touched upon in Unigwe’s
earlier work. By featuring a central character who shares the novelist’s
Afro-European background, the narrative also exposes some shortcomings of
Belgian society, like its pervasive unwelcoming atmosphere and the
superficiality of many of its inhabitants.
Chika Unigwe’s second novel, On Black Sisters' Street (first released in
Dutch under the title Fata Morgana), a tale of choices and displacement set
against the backdrop of the Antwerp prostitution scene won the 2012 edition
of the NLNG Prize for Literature.
Her Third Novel
Published Books
night dancer
Night Dancer is set in Nigeria and tells the story of Mma and her stubborn
mother, Ezi. Ezi's unexpected death leads Mma to learn about her mother's
past and rethink the resentment and contempt she has held for her mother her
whole life. Mma resents her mother who likes to say things twice like
'dance-dance' and 'happy-happy' and who won't let Mma know anything about
her father - Ezi left her husband, Mike, and life in Kaduna, when Mma was a
baby to raise her as a single mother.
Written in three parts, Chika Unigwe tells a beautiful story, which reveals
what happened, why everything is the way it is and why every character in
the book did what they did. It starts in 2001, after Ezi's death, and
concentrates on Mma's very negative feelings and hatred towards her mother.
From Mma's point of view we see what being raised by a proud single mother
did to her childhood and how it affected Mma's life. When Mma starts reading
Ezi's letters or her 'memoirs', Mma finds out the truth about her mother,
her past life and why she did what she did. Her mother's letters also leads
Mma to be reunited with the family she never knew she had - grandfather,
uncles, aunts, father. It then goes back to 1960 where we find out what
exactly happened to make Ezi leave her husband Mike, and raise their
daughter Mma on her own. And it comes back to 2002 when Mma eventually meets
her father, Mike, and begins to change her mind about her mother. In these
three parts, we hear both Ezi and Mma voices.
