Time and again, the Nigerian literary tradition since the publication of Things Fall Apart (Achebe 1958) throws up works that sustain interest. One such in the first quarter of the twenty-first century is Unigwe’s (2013) Night Dancer. Unigwe is a contemporary bilingual Nigerian female writer, writing in Dutch and English. Her first work, De Feniks, appeared in 2005. She was shortlisted for the Caine Prize in 2013, which was later won by Tope Folarin in 2013. She was selected for Hay Festival’s Africa39, a list of 39 Sub-Saharan African writers aged under 40, who possess the potential and talent for making an impact in African literature. Her second novel, Fata Morgana, was published in Dutch in 2008 and subsequently released in English. Titled On Black Sisters’ Street in its English translation and winning the 2012 Nigeria NLG Prize, Unigwe’s novel is about African prostitutes living and working in Belgium. The above works, including her Black Messiah (2014), a novel about the prodigious black slave narrative writer Olaudah Equiano, have helped Unigwe to firmly establish herself as a culturally committed writer in the contemporary Nigerian literary space. She is currently married with children. This last biographical fact, interestingly, sharply contrasts the characters she projects in Night Dancer, her fourth work.

Integrated Approach,Trauma Theory: Balaev’s Strand, A Mother’s Past,Chika Unigwe’s Night Dancer.