To mark World Mental Health Day, we are very pleased to have a copy of this inspirational book to give away.

What if you could read the thoughts teenagers are too afraid to say out loud?

Written entirely while Adrien Kabunga was 16 (now aged 18), The Mind of a 16-Year-Old is an unfiltered collection of poetry and prose about the chaos of adolescence: anxiety, identity, loneliness, pressure, grief, self-doubt, fleeting joy and the exhausting performance of pretending everything is fine.

Structured across seven acts, the book moves through inner turmoil, darkness and ultimately towards the first signs of something changing. Adrien writes from inside the experience rather than looking back on it, capturing the immediacy of being young, overwhelmed and still trying to understand who you are.

Raw, intimate and strikingly honest, this is a book for anyone who has ever wondered whether they were the only person feeling this much.

Adrien writes for every soul who has ever felt lost, unworthy, or unseen. A raw and haunting reminder that even shattered voices and endless voids carry beauty, and that within the chaos of being sixteen, there’s poetry.

For all the 16-year-old souls that never healed, that are going through it, and to everyone who felt unseen. This is for you.

Adrien Kabunga is a Congolese writer and poet, born in Beni, North Kivu, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2008. His work explores emotion, identity, human experience and the complicated relationship people have with themselves and the world around them.

Adrien began writing poetry in primary school, after volunteering to write a poem for his school director’s wedding. What began as a school assignment soon developed into a much deeper relationship with writing.

In 2020, the death of a longtime childhood friend inspired his second poem, “Emotions and Revelation”, later dedicated to his friend in his debut poetry collection, Warm But Cold. Writing became a way for Adrien to process difficult emotions and explore thoughts and feelings that were otherwise hard to express. Music is also a major creative influence on his work.

Warm But Cold was first published in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in May 2023, followed by an international release that November and a French-language edition in April 2024.

Now at the beginning of his literary career, Adrien hopes to expand beyond poetry, experiment with new forms of storytelling and reach readers around the world.