Yorùbá Boy Running

Nigerian filmmaker and novelist Bándélé (Burma Boy), who died in 2022, provides a fitting capstone to his career with this astonishing novel based on the life of Samuel Àjàyí Crowther (1809–1891), who obtained his freedom from slavery and went on to become the first Black African Anglican bishop. The tale begins in 1821, when 13-year-old Àjàyí is stolen from his Yorùbá village, along with his mother, sister, and best friend, by Malian slavers. From there, Bándélé alternates scenes of heart-pounding suspense with political satire and excerpts from Crowther’s journal. After enduring devastating brutality at the hands of Portuguese slavers in Lagos, Crowther and some 200 other enslaved men, women, and children are loaded on to a vessel and prepared to be shipped across the Atlantic. Before departing, however, their boat is captured by the British, who have outlawed the slave trade. Crowther is sent to make a new life for himself in Sierra Leone, where his abolitionist speeches attract attention from English missionaries, who encourage him to study at Oxford. He goes on to meet Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, translates the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer, and, in a dramatic and complex scene, pressures a king in Lagos to sign a treaty that will prohibit the slave trade at the price of ceding an island to the British Crown. It’s an unforgettable chronicle of an extraordinary man. Agent: Veronica Goldstein, UTA. (Sept.)