New writer readings/in conversation pieces: Session I

The first of three sessions with new authors: Session Chair, Philip Gwyn Jones, Executive Director of Granta Books in conversation with new writers:

Chibundu Onuzo, Noo Saro Wiwa and Katherine Rundell

Noo Saro-Wiwa was brought up in England, but every summer she was dragged back to Nigeria - a country she viewed as an annoying parallel universe where she had to relinquish all her creature comforts and sense of individuality. Then her father, activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, was murdered there, and she didn’t return for ten years. Recently, she decided to rediscover and come to terms with the country her father loved. She explored Nigerian Christianity, delved into its history of slavery, examined the corrupting effect of oil and investigated ‘Nollywood’. She found the country as exasperating as ever, and frequently despaired at the corruption and inefficiency she encountered. But she also discovered that it was far more beautiful and varied than she had ever imagined, and was seduced by its thick tropical rainforest and ancient palaces and monuments. Most engagingly of all she introduces us to the people she meets, and gives us hilarious insights into the Nigerian character, its passion, wit and ingenuity in her book, Looking for Transwonderland.

Chibundu Onuzo grew up in Lagos, the youngest of four children to doctor parents; she moved to the UK four years ago and is in her first year at King’s College London studying History.

Chibundu’s first novel is The Spider King’s Daughter; the tale of an unlikely friendship between a male street hawker and a daughter of the corrupt elite that struggles to establish itself amidst the prejudices of Nigerian society. It is at once a darkly humorous coming of age tale and the story of a country torn between its past, its future, and the choices it faces. Faber will publish this novel in March 2012.

Chibundu’s second novel, also to be published by Faber, follows two soldiers during the Niger Delta conflict.

Katherine Rundell grew up in London, Southern Africa and Brussels. She graduated with a double first in English from St Catherine’s College, Oxford, worked for a brief stint on the South Bank Show and in 2008 was elected a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. Her first book The Girl Savage was born of her love of Zimbabwe and her own, slightly feral, childhood there. She is currently writing a second novel alongside academic work on the letters of John Donne.

Admission: by free ticket only, available from yorkfestivalofideas.com/tickets