Yomi and the Fury of Ninki Nanka: 1 (The Nkara Chronicles, 1)

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It was literally a chance meeting,” says Davina. “I met one of BookTrust’s team members at the London Book Fair, right before the pandemic. They introduced themselves and said: ‘We have this scheme called BookTrust Represents, you should join.’” Tsitsi Dangarembga, the iconic novelist who was Open Country Mag’s first cover star, examines the legacy of imperialism on her own life. This paradigm-shifting essay collection is at once philosophical, intimate, hopeful, and urgent, and weaves the personal and political in an illuminating exploration of race and gender. We're giving 100 children the chance to read Yomi and the Fury of the Ninki Nanka before it hits bookshops in July. Fast forward to today, and Davina has an agent and a brilliant community of writers around her. The best news of all – she is now a published author, and her debut children’s novel Yomi and the Fury of Ninki Nanka was released in July.

In this collection, Naihoum brings to life a wonderful tableau of characters in his native Libya, from Sultans and Faqihs to dervishes, thieves, and beggars, shedding light on the dark corners of power and religion, social injustice and racism.The expedition, known as the “J. T. Downes Memorial Gambia Expedition 2006”, received a fair amount of media attention, including coverage in a BBC Online article. BookTrust Represents is a programme created to promote and improve the representation of people of colour in children’s books – so children can read a range of books that reflect them and their wider communities.

However, the children’s uncle won’t let them help in discovering what is going on so they take it upon themselves to find out what happened and save the dragon king. A beautiful woman is discovered half-naked and dead, but is the killer one of her wealthy suitors? A young doctor arrives at the brink of insanity after a forbidden entanglement with a married woman. A sexually promiscuous tailor’s return to her father’s house sparks lust, jealousy, chaos, and violence. These stories, by the winner of the Chinua Achebe Prize for Literature, open a window into Nigerian life. However, on the night that Uncle Olu shares stories of the Ninki Nanka, Yomi’s awakened by a roaring across the sky. She cannot believe her eyes! It seems that the Ninki Nanka is being stolen? Yet by whom? And then, how? Might it be that Yomi and Kayode can use what they have learned from Uncle Olu, read about and discerned by overheard conversations? Then again, what about the party at Aunty Binta’s where an encounter and chance discovery ignite Yomi and Kayode’s determination to discover the truth? Yomi and the Fury of Ninki Nanka is a magnificent story that is filled with excitement. The book is short in length but it is not short on amazing scenes and fabulous characters, including wonderful illustrations.The siblings are visiting The Gambia with their favourite, story–telling expert, Uncle Olu. They love his tales of the Sacred Nkana ( the beasts of Africa), handed down from their grandmother as "stories ran through our family like water", and they are expecting great entertainment to make this trip memorable forever… In the most unexpected way, it certainly becomes the trip of a lifetime - even a trip of life and death! Davina Tijani is part of the BookTrust Represents community of children’s authors and illustrators of colour. The Primary School Library Alliance is calling on the government to match-fund the private investment it has brought into helping primary schools c... A story of modern Nigeria and two families caught in the riptides of wealth, power, romantic obsession, and political corruption. In her second novel, Adébáyọ̀ explores the gaping divide between the haves and the have-nots, and the shared humanity that lives in between. An exhilarating, tragicomic debut novel about the indomitable child of a scorned, formerly land-owning family who must grow up in the wake of Ethiopia’s socialist revolution. It is about what happens when mother, God, and country are at odds, and how one difficult child finds her voice.

Maddie’s life in London is far from rewarding. With a mother who spends most of her time in Ghana, a father who suffers from advanced stage Parkinson’s, and a nightmare office scenario, she leaps at the chance to get out of the family home and finally start living. But it’s not long before tragedy strikes, forcing Maddie to face the true nature of her unconventional family. Yomi and her little brother Kayode are visiting their uncle who lives in The Gambia, Africa. One night their uncle reads them a story about Ninki Nanka, the dragon king. Then during a storm, Yomi sees Ninki Nanka being taken. Her uncle laughs at her claims in the morning but soon discovers that she may have been a witness after all.

It feels surreal, but amazing at the same time,” says Davina. “You know it's coming, and then it's like: 'Oh my God, it actually happened!'. Bako Thomas lives a solitary life, a calm centre in an increasingly unstable world. The city outside his apartment is sliding towards a dystopia as a fuel crisis holds citizens to ransom. When a tragedy forces him to go on the run, he is roped into the murky world of politics and corruption he thought he had left behind for good.

Yomi and the Fury of Ninki Nanka is a greatly entertaining quest story, where the mystery adventure genre is elevated and made unique by the captivating landscape and culture that the story is set within. Yomi and Kayode's witnesses and sources of information include some of the Sacred Beast themselves, and their sleuthing involves being nearly drowned by giant beast crustaceans, questioning spirit hippos and a 'sky rope', alongside defying death, time and time again. The brother and sister are bold, determined characters - Yomi's headstrong impatience and Kayode's quieter, more thoughtful manner make a great mystery-solving duo. year-old Noemi has no choice but to leave school and work in the house of the wealthy De Grandbourg family just across the road from the slums where she grew up, and she encounters a world that is starkly different from her own. The dust may have settled in the war of conquest between the Holy Vaalbaran Empire and the Ominirish Republic, but the Empire’s surrender means little. Especially to a lowly scribe like Enitan, given her country’s continuing status as a Vaalbaran province. All she wants is to quit her day job and expand her fledgling tea business. But when imperial agents assassinate her lover and abduct her sibling, she embarks on a mission, weaving her tea tray up through the heart of the Vaalbaran capital. We are an award winning independent bookshop in a fabulous three storey timber framed shop built in 1573. The bookshop opened in 2011 and has two floors of new books, tabletop games, comics and a large room dedicated to children’s books. We want to connect people to books, help children to develop a lifelong love of reading and to encourage conversation around books and reading. We also support local schools with a friendly, quality service and are happy to talk about books all day long. Nicole Oruwari has the perfect life. She left gloomy London and a dark family past behind for sunny, moneyed Lagos, becoming part of the Niger wives—a community of foreign women married to wealthy Nigerian men. But when she disappears after a boat trip, her Auntie Claudine decides to take matters into her own hands.In 1950s Nigeria, a bereaved seer embarks on a visionary journey into the future of a child yet unborn. That boy, Kunle, is a university student in Lagos burdened with a guilty conscience and who sets out to rescue his missing brother from Biafra, a country at war, only to find himself conscripted to fight in one of the most devastating and under-examined conflicts of the 20th century.