I recently had the opportunity to chat with author Suyi Davies Okungbowa about his new book, Warrior of the Wind, which had a November 21, 2023, release date in the United States. Warrior of the Wind is the second book in The Nameless Republic epic fantasy trilogy from Orbit Books.
From city streets where secrets are bartered for gold to forests teeming with fabled beasts, Suyi Davies Okungbowa’s sweeping epic of forgotten magic and violent conquests continues in this richly drawn fantasy inspired by the pre-colonial empires of West Africa.
In addition to this interview, you can read an excerpt of the first three chapters of the novel on the author’s website. You can also read Paul’s recent review of the series right here on the Skiffy & Fanty blog!
And please go buy a copy of Warrior of the Wind and/or the first novel of the series, Son of the Storm, from your favorite retailer. Or support your local library by requesting/checking a copy out!
For more details on the novel and its author, please read the official book blurb and author information that follow the interview. Thank you again to Suyi for doing this interview!
[Daniel: And a huge thanks to Tonya for bringing this conversation to us!]
Here’s a transcript (edited for clarity) of what Suyi and I talked about:
Tonya:
My first question and one that I love to ask every interviewee is:
What is the first thing that you hope comes to mind when someone thinks of Suyi Davies Okungbowa?
Suyi:
It is impossible, I believe, to think of my work as one thing. The thing I want people to know about my work [is] that it is impossible for my work to be only doing one thing, ever. I’m one of those people who aren’t fans of pigeon-holing, in any sense. To say, for example, that I’m an author of African Fantasy. I can be considered that, but also other things. That’s what I want people to know. I find it fascinating whenever people come to my work and then sort of leave saying, well, I got all these things and I didn’t expect to get these things.
I’m happy when readers are drawn to my work because maybe they’re looking for epic fantasy inspired by African empires. If that’s the door through which you come into my work, I’m happy with that. At the same time, I want you to know that many doors exist. That’s not the only door. There are multiple doors. I would hope that more people come through many different doors rather than having them believe that there’s only one way to come into my work.
My work will engage with a lot of stuff and could draw on my roots and my experiences. I have experienced many things, lived in many places, had many kinds of relationships, and all of these things are reflected in my work. When it comes to the thought systems that I draw on, some of them are very local to me. Some of them are very broad, global in their approach.
If anyone wants to know what my work is, I’d say [that] you may come into my work through one door but you will always have multiple doors from which to exit and also re-enter.
Tonya:
At what point did you have the stark realization that not only is the Black story one that needs to be told, but that you were meant to be one of those storytellers?
Suyi:
I would say that realization came [when] I started receiving stories. Luckily for me, I was living in a place where – while I might not have been seeing my stories or stories centering me in, say books – I had other kinds of literature that weren’t novels. Novels weren’t the only way through which I received stories growing up.
So, even if I didn’t quite see myself represented in the stories in front of me that were literature, specifically novels, I saw them in some other ways in local cinema or in oral storytelling practices that I experienced.
It just makes sense that I would draw on these experiences to tell the same story I’ve seen in other forms here, right? It felt like a natural progression to tell these stories because I’ve seen them and I knew what literature was like in every other form. This, I think will come naturally if you’re writing from a place of honesty. [That is] if you’re being honest about what and where you’re drawing from.
When I write, being honest about these things, then it just comes naturally that I will be telling the
story of the Black experience, the African experience. That’s how my storytelling turns out.
Tonya:
Cover Illustration by Dan dos Santo
The Nameless Republic is such a rich and intricately crafted world. When you were writing Son of the
Storm, did you already know that this was going to be a trilogy?
Suyi:
I knew that the world I was creating contained multiple stories. If you build a world and you’ve thought deeply about the moving parts, it can contain multiple stories. I wouldn’t say I was thinking about what those multiple stories were, but I knew it was possible, and I knew that if I needed to, I would be able to.
Tonya:
What are some of the books that you remember that have a deep impact on who you became as an author?
Suyi:
Rather than specific titles, I like to think of it more as a trajectory. The early part of my life was really a mixed bag. My parents are academics—professors. Our house was filled with different kinds of books. Religious texts, British detective novels, and Nora Roberts for example.
There was no demarcation between what you could read and what you couldn’t, so my foray into reading literature was everything from children’s books by British authors to the works of say, Robert Ludlum or The Godfather. There were also Harlequin romances, religious texts, Greek adventures, and Greek mythology. I had access to all those genres. It was a very wide pool.
I think when I really started realizing that I want to think about speculative fiction in this manner was once when I read a book by a local author in the city I lived in, at the time, Benin City in southern Nigeria, who self-published a small pamphlet about kids who find a spaceship and take it on a joy ride or something. This is too far back for me to remember anything about the author but it was just completely new to me because I hadn’t seen any stories about kids like me going aboard spaceships.
I want to see more of these things. For a while I simply jumped across authors that were available in the used book market. I’d see Stephen King or Neil Gaiman books sold secondhand or third-hand and I read a bunch of those. Then I came across books from Octavia Butler and much later, Nnedi Okorafor. I read Parable of the Sower and Blood Child by Octavia Butler and immediately realized that this kind of literature [was] what I had been looking for. These were books that centered [on] someone I could recognize. When I first came across Nnedi Okorafor’s work, it was the first time I was even seeing a person of Nigerian heritage writing in a way that held its own in the mainstream SFF field.
Their works became stepping stones, and I simply followed the path they carved out. Even if the work I do now doesn’t necessarily even look like theirs, they influenced the way I thought. Reading these works made me realize how my work could [be] in the world, and gave me an understanding of how my work could sit in the world.
Tonya:
What types of work would you say readers who will like the Nameless Republic are into?
Suyi:
I would say those who like complex fantasy. My work has a lot of politics in it, but I would say those who like stories with complicated, moving parts would enjoy reading The Nameless Republic because [that’s its] biggest strength. A lot of people say it’s those who really love world building, who love the Republic and that is true. I think it’s [a] very world-building world, like driven as a series. The world is one of the many moving parts. If you’re a fan of, say, Fonda Lee or Rebecca Roanhorse, The Nameless Republic would appeal to you.
Tonya:
You’ve obviously thought long and hard about the geography of this continent and this world. How much research did you have to pour into that?
Suyi:
Not as much as many would think. Luckily for me, I have lived in places with multiple kinds of geographical representations. Take Nigeria, for example. I grew up in the south of Nigeria, which is mostly rainforest and swamp. Then I lived in the north, which is sort of semiarid, for a while. Then I moved to the US and I lived in Arizona, which is also semiarid. Now I live in Ontario, Canada, which is super snowy for half of the year.
Tonya:
Can you tell me a little bit about the Literary Fellowship for Emerging African writers and what you
hope to achieve with that?
Suyi:
I call it my little raft because that’s what it is. It’s just a small program I started to help writers. Once upon a time, I was a writer existing on the African continent and I know exactly what kinds of bottlenecks they have to deal with. It’s not that there aren’t talented writers or that they don’t just have opportunities. It’s not really about that. It’s actually about whether they have the resources to actually deliver when the opportunity opens up.
Do they have the resources to walk through that door? The answer often 90% of the time is no. There’s lack of access, there’s lack of actual economic support, and there’s the lack of time. I was inspired by the way a friend of mine—who is not a writer, but at some point, decided that every quarter, or periodically during the year, she was going to just give £100 to £200 to a writer on the continent.
I remember I was a recipient of such funds and was able to take a few months off work. In those few months, I wrote the first third [of] what became David Mogo, God Hunter, my debut novel.
That inspired me to start something similar, because though it might be just a few 100 bucks, it can go a long way because it did go a long way for me.
I called it a raft because sometimes some people just need to leave the first space they’re existing in, just take a raft to the next island. Then from the island, they take a raft to the next one and the next one and that’s how they can start the journey; but that first inertia of leaving that first space and moving to the next is really hard.
So, I think of the fellowship as a way to fill that gap. We say we’ll give you three things. First, we’re going to give you money. It’s not a lot of money. It’s 500 bucks—$500 USD per person, but it can go a long way. The second thing is that I’m going to give you three months of my time. We meet every weekend for three months and we’ll just talk through what you tell me you’re writingm and I can then give you some advice.
We call it the Digital Fellowship because it’s virtual. You don’t need to travel.
The third thing is a community of practice. At the moment, this is a Discord group where past and present fellows can share ideas, publication news, and learn from each other.
Tonya:
What’s on the horizon for Suyi Davies Okungbowa—beyond The Nameless Republic?
Suyi:
I have a novella coming out next year. It’s titled Lost Ark Dreaming. It’s been called science fiction, but I think it’s more science fantasy. It has a mix of both elements. As for what this novella is about, think a vertical Snowpiercer in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. It has sort of a climate (eco-focused) fantastic narrative and I like to think of it as hope punk because it’s actually quite hopeful, even if it’s quite dystopic. This is not a great world. It’s a tower in the middle of the ocean and clearly, it’s very controlled.
I like to think, though, that hope tends to exist even in the darkness. So, how do you sort of shine a light on that “hope” part? That’s what I’m trying to do here. I hope many readers will leave the book feeling hopeful.
Official Book Blurb:
The empire has been reshaped. There is no peace in the season of the Red Emperor.
Traumatized by their escape from Bassa, Lilong and Danso have found safety in a vagabond colony on the edge of the emperor’s control. But time is running out on their refuge. A new bounty makes every person a threat, and whispers of magic have roused those eager for their own power.
Lilong is determined to return the Diwi—the ibor heirloom—to her people. It’s the only way to keep it safe from Esheme’s insatiable desire. The journey home will be long, filled with twists and treachery, unexpected allies and fabled enemies.
But surviving the journey is the least of their problems.
Something ancient and uncontrollable awakens. Trouble heads for Bassa, and the continent of Oon will need more than ibor to fix what’s coming.
Official Author Information:
Suyi Davies Okungbowa is an award-winning Nigerian author of fantasy, science fiction and general speculative fiction. He has published various novels for adults, the latest of which is Son of the Storm (Orbit, 2021), first in the epic fantasy trilogy, The Nameless Republic (the second book in the series, Warrior of the Wind, is forthcoming in 2023). His debut novel. David Mogo, Godhunter (Abaddon, 2019) won the 2020 Nommo Award for Best Speculative Novel by an African.
He has also published works for younger audiences (under Suyi Davies) such as Stranger Things: Lucas on the Line (Random House, 2022), Minecraft: The Haven Trials (Del Rey, 2021) and contributed to the instant #1 NYT bestselling anthology Black Boy Joy. His shorter works have appeared in various periodicals and anthologies, and have been nominated for various awards.
Okungbowa is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Ottawa in Ontario, where he currently lives. As a speaker and instructor, he has taught writing at the college level and spoken at various venues, institutionally and publicly. He earned his MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Arizona.
Suyi can be found on Instagram/Threads: @suyidavies, Bluesky: @suyidavies.com, and on his YouTube channel.
