Yoruba Boy Running

 In this book, Bándélé is turning to history for inspiration. Like Burma Boy, which drew on Bándélé’s father’s stories, Yorùbá Boy Running was partly inspired by the history of Bándélé’s great-grandfather, who, like his protagonist, Samuel Ajayi Crowther, was formerly enslaved.

At the age of 13, the real-life Crowther was captured with his entire family and most of his village by Fulani slave raiders; taken to the slave barracoons on Eko island, or Lagos, as it was named by Portuguese merchants; and eventually sold off to transatlantic slave traders. The slave ship, bound for Brazil, was captured by British navy boats and Crowther was set free. He was settled in Freetown, Sierra Leone, which was founded for returned enslaved men and women.

What Bándélé brings to this well-known story is his ability slowly and painstakingly to build his protagonist’s character, not just as the public figure known to every schoolchild in Nigeria – the first black man to be ordained a bishop by the Anglican Church of England, the first African to earn a degree from the University of Oxford – but also as a father, a son, a husband and a citizen. The book paints a vivid picture of an emergent Lagos, with its slave markets and its vibrant Saro (returned slaves) community; its king, Dosunmu, forced by the British to sign a treaty at gunpoint ceding away his kingdom for its “protection”.