Chibundu Onuzo is returning to the world of Mayowa, the young heroine at the centre of her imaginative adventure series for children, with Mayowa and the Fire of Speech, the second book in the trilogy.

Published by Bloomsbury, the new novel is scheduled for 4 June 2026 and continues Mayowa’s journey into a world where books, language and imagination have unusual powers.

Eleven-year-old Mayowa travels to Nigeria, where she visits her family and meets her great-aunt, Iya Ibeji, in Alaafia, a community near Lagos. There, she begins to discover an ancient Yoruba art known as esin l’oro, in which spoken words can shape reality.

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The discovery comes as Alaafia faces a more immediate threat. The arrival of oil interests puts the community and its way of life at risk, leaving Mayowa with a new challenge as she learns more about the power of speech and the history of the people around her.

The book follows Mayowa and the Sea of Words, published in 2024, which introduced readers to Mayowa and the series’ imaginative concept of “logosalters”: people who can jump onto books and channel the emotions contained within them.

The new story moves the adventure further into Nigeria, bringing Yoruba language and cultural traditions into the centre of Mayowa’s world. It is a setting that allows Onuzo to build a fantasy story around something as familiar and powerful as spoken language, while keeping the book grounded in family, community and place.

Onuzo, who was born in Lagos and now lives in London, is best known for her novels for adults, including The Spider King’s Daughter, which won the Betty Trask Award, and Sankofa, which was selected for Reese Witherspoon’s Book Club. She is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Mayowa and the Fire of Speech is aimed at readers aged eight and above and is the second instalment in what has been confirmed as a three-book series.

For younger readers, the Mayowa books offer a version of adventure in which African places, languages and traditions are part of the imaginative landscape from the beginning, rather than something added to it afterwards. The new book continues that approach, with Mayowa’s journey taking her deeper into a world where words can carry consequences of their own.