Yorùbá Boy Running

Author(s): Biyi Bándélé

Location(s): England, Nigeria, Sierra Leone

Genre(s): Historical, Biography, Fiction

Era(s): Early 19th Century

Yorùbá Boy Running charts Samuel Ajayi Crowther’s miraculous journey from slave to liberator, boy to man, running to resisting

‘Run, Àjàyí, run!’

The day the Malian slave traders invaded the Nigerian town of Òsogùn, thirteen-year-old Àjàyí’s life was split in two.

Before, there was his childhood, surrounded by friends and family, watched over by the ancient Yorùbá gods of forest and water, earth and sky. After: capture, slavery – and release, into the service of a new god, his own culture left far behind. So Àjàyí becomes Samuel Crowther – missionary, linguist, minister – and abolitionist: driven to negotiate against his own people to end the miserable trade in human beings which destroyed his family.

From the heart-stopping drama of Àjàyí’s last day of freedom to his consecration as the first African Bishop of the Anglican Church, Biyi Bándélé’s kaleidoscopic reimagining of Crowther’s life is a brilliant tour de force.

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