Ankara Press, the commercial imprint of Cassava Republic Press, has acquired UK and Commonwealth rights to Ghanaian writer Cheryl Ntumy’s The Seven States, a three-book romantasy series blending political intrigue, forbidden magic, commerce, and slow-burn romance.

The trilogy will open with A Guide to Silk and Seduction, scheduled for May 2027, followed by A Manifesto for Magic and Mayhem in 2028 and An Ode to Love and Liberation in 2029.

Set in a world where powerful merchant Houses shape the fate of nations and magic has been outlawed, the series follows Adjai Asaré, the daughter of one of Avor’s most powerful silk Houses, as she pursues a position as Emissary. Her ambitions become complicated when she encounters Essyen Oppong, a gifted shoemaker who agrees to help her—but is secretly a mage connected to a movement challenging the laws of the Seven States.

As Adjai and Essyen grow closer, their relationship becomes entangled with the political and magical forces reshaping their world. The series brings together merchant dynasties, forbidden magic, political upheaval, and romance, with silk, craft, trade, and inheritance playing central roles in the story’s imagined societies.

For Ankara Press, the acquisition marks a move further into romantasy, a genre that has experienced growing attention across commercial publishing while offering African writers new spaces to experiment with fantasy, romance, and speculative worldbuilding.

Boluwatito Sanusi, Assistant Editor, Ankara Press, who acquired the trilogy for Ankara Press, said she was immediately drawn into Ntumy’s world.

“Cheryl Ntumy is one of the most gifted comic and romantic voices working in fiction today, and THE SEVEN STATES is her most ambitious, most irresistible work yet.”

She added that the series’ world of formidable women, merchant dynasties, forbidden magic, and political intrigue drew her in, while the relationship between Adjai and Essyen provides what she described as the series’ central charge.

Ntumy is a Ghanaian writer whose work spans speculative fiction, young adult fiction, and romance. She is a member of the Sauútiverse Collective, a community of writers and artists building a shared universe for Afrocentric speculative fiction, and Petlo Literary Arts, an organisation supporting creative writing in Botswana.

Her novella Songs for the Shadows was published by Atthis Arts in 2024, followed by Black Friday and Other Stories from Ghana, published by Flame Tree Publishing in 2025. Her fiction and other writing have appeared in FIYAH Magazine, Apex Magazine, and World Literature Today. Her work has also received recognition from the Nommo Awards, Commonwealth Writers Short Story Prize, and Miles Morland Foundation Scholarship.

With The Seven States, Ntumy turns toward a longer-form fantasy project, building a world where questions of power and desire unfold through commerce, craft, magic, and the intimate negotiations between people who want different futures.

A Guide to Silk and Seduction is scheduled for publication in May 2027.