MALORIE BLACKMAN
Children can be brutal to their parents. In 2010, Tinie Tempah released “Written In The Stars”, in which the rapper declared himself to be “a writer from the ghetto like Malorie Blackman”. Cue Blackman and her daughter, Elizabeth, going online to check out the video. “My daughter turned to me and said, ‘You are the most uncool person I’ve ever met, but at this moment you are cool,’” laughs Blackman.
Why have Tempah and, more recently, Stormzy namechecked Blackman? Because series, a sequence of dystopian YA books set in a world where black Africans once enslaved white Europeans, and where society is still segregated. The latest volume, , tackles our age of populism by reintroducing Tobey, a major character in 2008’s , as a politician ruthlessly determined to get to the top. Accused of murder, he turns to an old friend, Callie Rose, for help.
