The book tour for thrilling new YA book The Upper World visited Sydenham High today with year 10 enjoying a fun and informative session with author Femi Fadugba.

A sci-fi novel with time travel set on the streets of Peckham, The Upper World created a 15-way bidding auction when pitched to publishers and has already been snapped up by Netflix to become a film in 2022.

Femi described his background from being born in Togo to moving to the USA at 4, and then on to the UK a few years later when his time was split between a boarding school in Somerset and his aunt’s home in Peckham, before going to study at Oxford.

Keen to write a book his younger self would enjoy, Femi links physics and south London culture in a story of love, violence and friendship across time. He talked about the special type of hidden energy contained within everyone and everything using Einstein’s theory of special relativity to illustrate this by comparing the energy within a student to that of the Hiroshima atomic bomb.

After a reading and lively Q&A, students queued eagerly to meet Femi individually and have their books signed.

Thank you to Penguin Books UK and Authors Aloud for gifting us this opportunity, and to Tales on Moon Lane for providing the books.

Pupil Voice

What I enjoyed about meeting Femi:

“I loved being able to laugh with him and interact.”

“Very fun and interactive”

“…how exciting he made everything in the book.”

“His calming and laid back personality and his creativity that went into his book.”

“How he talked about how even if you aren’t great at something right now, you can improve and it isn’t set in stone.”

“…his creative story and engaging personality”