The architects must only have thought of women when they designed retirement homes, and assumed they liked to sit and stare solemnly at gardens all d… - Sarah Ladipo Manyika

You mention Abubakar’s wonderful novel, Season of Crimson Blossoms, and I can tell you that when it came out I joked with him that his fifty-five-year-old Bintu could hardly be considered an old woman, at least not in comparison to my Morayo, two decades older. However, I hadn’t yet met Willard Harris, a real-life character and now a dear friend whom I write about in my new book. Mrs. Harris was ninety-seven years old when I first met her, and at that time she had a “gentleman friend” who was at least a decade younger than her. You know what they say about life being stranger or more interesting than fiction.

Thanks to my mum, I read many Puffin classics. I loved the miniature Beatrix Potter books, Richard Adam’s Watership Down, and tales of Brer Rabbit. As a child, I was a voracious reader, of books and of people, and still am an inveterate eavesdropper and people-watcher. Snippets of overheard conversations and the faces of people not usually noticed often inspire the stories I write. Wondering about other people’s life stories is what I do.

Had I known that my first novel would become required reading for all students applying to university in Nigeria, I probably wouldn’t have had the courage to write it. It has been an incredible honor for me to have a book read by so many people and especially exciting to know that the novel is, in some small way, inspiring a new generation of writers.