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Unigwe’s Night Dancer… Same beautiful story with new look

By Editor
03 September 2017   |   2:44 am
Parresia Publishers has released the reprint of Night Dancer by Chika Unigwe. The first edition had a few problems with the print, which we profusely apologise for.

Chika Unigwe

Parresia Publishers has released the reprint of Night Dancer by Chika Unigwe. The first edition had a few problems with the print, which we profusely apologise for. The second edition is a complete overhaul, which represents the amazing story Unigwe has woven. The second edition of Night Dancer is also being published with a new cover.

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 had left her husband, Mike, and life in Kaduna, when Mma was a baby and raised her as a single mother.

Written in three parts, Unigwe tells a beautiful story, which reveals what happened, why everything is the way it is and why every character in the book does what they do. It starts in 2001 after Ezi’s death, and concentrates on Mma’s negative feelings and hatred towards her mother. From Mma’s point of view we see what being raised by a proud, single mother does to her childhood and how it affects 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 and her grandfather, uncles, and aunts. 

It then goes back to 1960, why Ezi left her husband, Mike, and had to 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’s voices. Lovers of literature will enjoy three new titles Paresia publish this November.

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