Imparting wisdom through music, prose, poetry, and lectures, Akala is a modern sage in our contemporary society. The BAFTA and MOBO award-winning artist has just added another string to his bow with the release of his debut novel ‘The Dark Lady’.
Centred around the urban underclass in sixteenth century London, the novel is aimed at teens and young adults. Speaking about the ‘The Dark Lady’ on Instagram, Akala said, “My new novel is inspired by Shakespeare’s series of ‘Dark Lady’ sonnets. Most period stories tend to focus on elites and so I wanted to write something from the perspective of poor people from the streets back then and was pleasantly surprised by how much research was available into life in the slums of sixteenth century London and also on the presence of Black people and other ‘foreign’ immigrants at the time.”
He added, “Although it’s set in 16th century London and inspired by Shakespeare’s work “The Dark Lady” it is also inspired by one of my other passions… the history of the ‘medieval‘ West Africa. The backstory for Shakespeare’s “Dark Lady”, I imagined a migration from the kingdom of Benin, across Mali and through Timbuktu, into the Mediterranean into Venice and finally to London. The Dark Lady’s fathers story becomes inspiration for Shakespeare’s “Othello”.”
It is unsurprising that Akala chooses to superimpose medieval West Africa onto a familiar sixteenth century world. As a part of history that has been entirely ignored by the Western canon, the decision represents the 37-year-old’s wider interest in exposing the racial legacies of colonialism and the subsequent oversights of contemporary British society.
Released in 2019, Akala’s ‘Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire’ focussed explicitly on these two things. Interspersing these history lessons and postcolonial analyses with personal memoirs of growing up in Camden, Akala struck a perfect balance in creating a book that was both highly informative but extremely readable. Just as he embedded medieval West African history – a world that will be alien to many readers – into a familiar Shakespearean world in ‘The Dark Lady’, Akala used these personal memoirs to soften the heaviness of his intellectual content in ‘Natives’. In both cases, he makes sure not to alienate his readers, and instead speak in a way that everyone can understand.
These other artistic pursuits, which also include a comic book series and a children’s book, have meant that Akala has been incredibly quiet when it comes to releasing music in recent years. His previous album ‘Knowledge Is Power II’ was released back in 2015, and since then his solo releases and guest features have been sparse. Now that his debut novel has finally been released, there will pressure for the polymath to get back in the studio – if he has not already – and re-affirm himself as one of the UK rap scene’s finest wordsmiths.
Akala’s debut novel ‘The Dark Lady’ is available to purchase here.
