Picnic time: Meet the India-born Londoner behind the new Enid Blyton mysteries

India-born Londoner Sufiya Ahmed has expanded Enid Blyton’s classic series with Timmy and the Treasure (January 2022) and Five and the Runaway Dog (May 2022), published by Hodder & Stoughton, an imprint of Hachette. Two more books complete the series, Five and the Message In a Bottle and Five and the Mysterious Noise. Both will be out by July 2023.

The new adventures are divided into short chapters accompanied by colour illustrations to introduce young audiences to amateur sleuthing: hunting for clues, cracking codes and investigating strange occurrences in the neighbourhood. The settings and the main characters are the same: Julian, the eldest, still likes to play the leader, George is always challenging that leadership, Dick has the hilarious comebacks and the youngest Anne is both docile and brave in her own way. Timmy, their lovable golden mongrel, too ends up saving the day several times in the new series.

But the plot is more inclusive and reflective of modern times; Simi, a South Asian girl has moved into Kirrin village, the iconic setting of the Famous Five books. She plays a pivotal role in the 2022 books. The kids also turn to a police chief who is of Nigerian heritage. “We wanted to preserve the essence of the original period they were set in, while making a few sensitive inclusions, like depicting enough women and people of colour in Kirrin village,” says Ahmed.

“They transported me into worlds where mysteries were solved, adventures were experienced and fantastical settings were explored. I think it’s the escapism that gripped me really, and made me a reader who wanted to grow up to be a writer,” she says. As a young girl, she identified the most with Anne’s shy and quiet character, who found comfort in retreating to a corner with a book. “I’m no longer shy and quiet, but still a bookworm,” says Ahmed, who has fond memories of visiting her grandparents in Surat during her yearly vacations. “As the first grandchild in the family, I was showered with equal parts of love and laddoos whenever I visited my nannyma [grandmother]. My plump baby pictures are testament to this.”

Having South Asian roots however, meant that she didn’t find enough relatable characters in the books she read while growing up. Ahmed found solace in Bollywood cinema, admiring Zeenat Aman’s Roma in Don (1978) and Sridevi in films where she played strong, independent women, like the feisty crime reporter Seema in Mr India (1987). Ahmed desperately wanted South Asian women to have a stronger representation in literature as well.

To fix that she wrote her first book on forced marriages, Secrets of the Henna Girl (2013), while also working as a researcher in the Houses of Parliament. It won the Redbridge Children’s Book Award. Her other books, My Story: Noor-in-Nissa Inayat Khan (August 2020) and My Story: Princess Sophia Duleep Singh (January 2022) are an ode to brave South Asian women who played pivotal roles in World War II and the suffragette movement.

“Noor and Sophia’s stories are about our shared history,” she says. “I feel they can add to the sense of belonging for British South Asians to our home country. But community cohesion has to work both ways, so school children should learn more about the contributions of south Asians to Britain too.”

Her latest book Rosie Raja: Churchill’s Spy revolves around a Muslim half-Indian and half-English protagonist, Rosina Raja, a spy in France during World War II. The first in the two-part series will be published by Bloomsbury on August 4. The second book, set in Egypt, will be out next year. “There were so many Indian soldiers stationed to protect the Suez Canal from the Nazis, the British Empire gateway to India. They had to be given a voice,” says Ahmed.