Books: Why you should read Unigwe’s The Middle Daughter – Wildlife conservationist

“If you are to ask me for that one ‘book recommendation’ that is a must-read this year, The Middle Daughter by Chika Unigwe will be that recommendation,” Enwongo Cleopas-Akwa, a lawyer and wildlife conservationist, said in a 24 October post on Facebook.

“From my heart,” she said, revealing how much the recommendation meant to her.

According to her friends, Enwongo is a woman with a beautiful soul. She aspires almost constantly to touch everyone and everything around her and make them look beautiful. And when she loves a thing, she wants the world to love it, too.

In her Facebook post, Enwongo discussed Unigwe’s writing style in The Middle Daughter, the themes of the novel, which was first published in April 2023, and why everyone should read it.

“Like I tell my friends, Chika (Unigwe) knows how to tell a story and get you fully absorbed – that you are left wanting for more at the last full stop,” she said.

“It is both a heavy and a light book. It makes you experience a wide range of emotions; that you almost feel like you are living the story told, simply.

“It is interesting how the loss of a parent is experienced in different ways by the children. For some families, the shared grief bonds them, but for others, that’s the beginning of a journey to Hades. This is one of the themes explored in the book.

“The other theme explored in the book is one I do not like to talk about anymore – the ensnaring and manipulative side of religion. Many of us think we are above being preyed on by religious conmen, but we are all just an event away from succumbing to this, especially in this part of the world,” referring to Nigeria.

“It is worse for women, especially when vulnerability and a desire to be partnered or accepted is in the mix. Many marriages have been established upon this religious predation.

“This book makes you sit with one of such examples.”

About the author

Unigwe, 50, is the author of four novels. Her novel, On Black Sisters’ Street, won the 2012 NLNG Nigeria Prize for Literature.

The Nigerian writer previously lived in Belgium with her husband and four children before she moved to the US in 2013.

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In June 2016, Unigwe told PREMIUM TIMES that Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and Buchi Emecheta’s Second Class Citizen are two books that shaped her life.

“The former gave me permission to write, and it validated the African experience as one worthy of being written about (at a time I was inundated with Enid Blyton books), and the latter opened the way to immigrant literature for me,” she had said.