Waking the Warriors: Ben Okri

Sir Ben Okri is coming to the Millennium Gallery on Saturday 17 October, where he'll be talking about his latest book, Waking the Warriors. He's in conversation with Tara Tobler, and the whole thing kicks off at 1:00pm.

Waking the Warriors is a modern fable built around the old legend of sleeping warriors who only wake when their kingdom faces mortal danger. Okri takes that idea and drops it into a dystopian world of invading armies, frightened refugees and authoritarian rulers, with darker forces draining people's will to resist. It's a story that works on two levels: the fable of the sleeping army and the very real, grounded picture of a world under pressure.

Okri is a novelist, essayist, playwright and poet who's spent his career working at the intersection of politics, spirituality and the relationship between the visible and unseen worlds. He was born in Minna, Nigeria, and raised between Nigeria and London, and that dual perspective runs through everything he writes. His novel The Famished Road won the Booker Prize for Fiction, so this is a good chance to hear from one of the city's most acclaimed visiting writers.

The talk is part of Sheffield's Off the Shelf Festival of Words, which falls during Black History Month. The Millennium Gallery is the city's flagship art institution, the younger sibling of the nearby Graves Gallery, and it leans towards the modern side of art. Its two permanent displays, the Metalwork and Ruskin Collections, are rooted in Sheffield's metalworking heritage. Tickets are £12, or £10 for concessions, and the talk starts at 1:00pm on Saturday 17 October.