Ben Okri, Booker Prize winner, talks about his novel Waking the Warriors in conversation with writer Tara Tobler at the Millennium Gallery.
Ben Okri is coming to the Millennium Gallery on Sunday 25 October, for a book talk on his latest, Waking the Warriors. He'll be in conversation with Tara Tobler, a writer, critic and senior fiction editor at And Other Stories, so it's a proper discussion rather than a reading. The session starts at 13:00 at 48 Arundel Gate, S1 2PP.
Waking the Warriors is a modern fable built around the old legend of the sleeping warriors who wake when the kingdom is in mortal danger. Okri sets it in a dystopic world where the biggest enemy isn't the tyrant in charge, but the dark forces draining the people's will to resist. It's the kind of story that works on two levels: the fable on the surface and the political point underneath.
If you're not familiar with Okri, he's a novelist, essayist, playwright and poet who won the Booker Prize for Fiction for The Famished Road. He was born in Minna, Nigeria, and spent his childhood split between Nigeria and London. Marlon James has called him 'fiction's master enchanter', and The Guardian put it as 'magic is essential, and Okri can spin it'. In 2019, Astonishing the Gods was named one of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World', so there's a fair bit of ground to cover if you're hearing him talk for the first time.
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The talk is part of the Off the Shelf Festival and Black History Month Sheffield 2026, which this year runs under the theme 'Honouring Our Communities'. That's organised by the African Heritage Culture Forum, who work with organisations across the city to raise awareness of Sheffield's diverse history and culture. It's a Sunday afternoon slot, 13:00 at the Millennium Gallery.
