WELLINGTON’S Bookshop by the Blackdowns kickstarted its 2025 programme of Author Talks with Nikki May, the writer of acclaimed novel Wahala and new-to-paperback This Motherless Land, on Friday, April 11.

Wahala tells the story of a group of Anglo-Nigerian friends and their partners, living happily enough in London. Their friendship group is then infiltrated by another woman who causes “wahala”, or trouble, for them all.

This book won the Comedy Women in Print New Voice Prize 2022/23, was long-listed for a number of other prizes, and has been chosen by the BBC to be adapted into a major new television series.

Nikki then published her second book This Motherless Land in 2024, which she has been recently promoting at the Rockefeller Centre in New York, having had it chosen by Jenna Bush Hagar, George W. Bush’s daughter, to be one of her monthly picks.

The book takes its initial inspiration from Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park and tells the story of Funke, a mixed-race girl, who is uprooted from her home in Lagos following a family tragedy to live with her English relatives in Somerset.

Following the huge success of Wahala, This Motherless Land has also been optioned by the BBC for screen adaptation. It has also been shortlisted for the Stanford Travel Book Award 2025 and has been a big hit in the US.

Owners of the bookshop, Sue and Richard D’Rozario, say they were delighted to welcome Nikki to Wellington.

Richard said: “From the Rockefeller Centre to Bookshop by the Blackdowns – what a delight for us!”

Bookshop by the Blackdowns will host their next Author Talk on Thursday, May 1 with author of Death on Dartmoor Edge, Stephanie Austin, followed by Sarah Easter Collins on Friday, June 13.