Mayowa and the Fire of Speech is the second title in Chibundu Onuzo’s imaginative adventure trilogy about one girl’s power to change the world through the magic of book-jumping and the power of words, aimed at readers aged 8 and up. It is due for publication by  Bloomsbury on 4 June 2026.

Eleven-year-old Mayowa is about to embark on the adventure of a lifetime: a long-awaited trip to Nigeria to visit her family. Ever since discovering her unusual gift, passed down from her British Grandpa Edward, she has been learning to harness a strange and brilliant magic. All she has to do is leap onto a book, and the emotions inside its pages surge through her, sweeping her into wild, unpredictable experiences.

When she arrives in Nigeria, Mayowa meets her mysterious great-aunt, Iya Ibeji, who welcomes her to Alaafia, a peaceful haven just outside Lagos, and introduces her to esin l’oro, an ancient art that reveals how spoken words can change and shape reality. But when oil is discovered near Alaafia, the paradise her aunt has created is threatened, and Mayowa and her family must work together to save it before it’s too late.

The book follows the acclaimed debut, Mayowa and the Sea of Words (2024), which introduced the concept of “logosalters” — people who, by jumping on a book, can harness the emotions inside it and channel them directly into other people. The first book was praised as “joyful and truly original” by Katherine Rundell, author of Impossible Creatures, and described as “a future classic that fizzes with originality” by A.F. Steadman, author of the Skandar series.

Chibundu Onuzo was born in Lagos, Nigeria and lives in London. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, she won a Betty Trask Award for her debut novel The Spider King’s Daughter, which she sold at age nineteen. Her adult novel Sankofa was an October 2021 Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick.

Onuzo has confirmed the Mayowa series will be a trilogy. Mayowa and the Fire of Speech deepens the world-building by rooting Mayowa’s powers in Yoruba linguistic tradition alongside the book-jumping magic introduced in the first installment, a rich blend of Nigerian heritage and fantasy that should delight fans of Pages & Co. and Amari and the Night Brothers.