Abi Daré’s The Girl with the Louding Voice will be narrated on BBC 4 by actress Ronkẹ Adékoluẹjo.

The novel will be broadcast in ten 14-minute episodes with Episode 1 airing on July 13. Episodes are scheduled everyday up until July 23.

The Girl With the Louding Voice is one of the most buzzed about African fiction at the moment, so don’t miss this chance to hear the book brought to life on audio. Click here to listen.

The novel tells the story of 14-year-old Adunni who dreams of acquiring an education and becoming a teacher. After the death of her mother, Adunni is sold into marriage and then into domestic slavery in Lagos. In spite of her circumstances, Adunni continues to seek out an education and express her “louding voice.”

The novel is on Brittle Paper‘s Anticipated Books of 2020 list. Since its early February release, The Girl with the Louding Voice has become a New York Times best seller, Amazon’s #1 Pick for Best Book of 2020 So Far, and it was shortlisted for the 2020 Desmond Elliot Prize.

Much of Abi Daré’s research in writing this novel focused on finding Adunni’s voice. Daré explained in an interview with the New York Times that she poured over Alice Walker’s The Color Purple and Nigerian films in order to capture the voice of a character who does not lack intelligence but rather the “proper” English that comes with a formal education.

Daré elaborates:

I wanted to show that this was a girl who dreamed. She is more than just a girl that needs to be up at 4 a.m. in the morning. She’s intelligent, and if she was given a chance, and other young girls in the world, they will shine and they will thrive. I really wanted her to come across as someone that was more than a girl that could not speak English. And this is why she makes that realization somewhere in the book that, look, it’s just a language. It’s not a measure of intelligence.

We can’t wait to hear Adunni’s voice brought to life in this BBC 4 broadcast!

Click here to listen and tune in every day from July 13 for new episodes.