Kati ya vitabu vile vitatu, hakuna nilichokipenda.

Kati ya means among here.

So Kati ya vitabu vile vitatu means among those three books or out of those three books.

In other contexts, kati ya can also mean between, depending on what is being compared.

This is a normal Swahili noun phrase order:

noun + demonstrative + number

So:

• vitabu = books
• vile = those
• vitatu = three

Together: those three books

Swahili often places demonstratives and numbers after the noun, unlike English.

Because they must agree with the noun class of vitabu.

Kitabu = book
Vitabu = books

The plural vitabu belongs to the ki-/vi- noun class, so words connected to it also show that agreement:

• vile = those, agreeing with vitabu
• vitatu = three, agreeing with vitabu

This agreement is a major feature of Swahili grammar.

Here hakuna means there is none, there was none, or more naturally in English, none of them.

So in this sentence, it gives the idea:

Among those three books, there was none that I liked
or
Of those three books, I liked none

Swahili often uses hakuna where English might simply use none.

Because the noun is understood from context.

The sentence is talking about books, so hakuna is understood as something like:

hakuna kitabu nilichokipenda
= there was no book that I liked

Since vitabu has already been mentioned, Swahili can leave the noun out.

It can be broken down like this:

• ni- = I
• -li- = past tense
• -cho- = relative marker for class 7
• -ki- = object marker for kitabu
• -pend- = like/love
• -a = final vowel

So the whole form means roughly:

that I liked it

In smoother English, we would just say:

that I liked

They do different jobs.

• -cho- introduces the relative idea — that/which
• -ki- refers back to the object kitabu — it

So nilichokipenda is literally something like:

which I liked it

That sounds wrong in English, but it is normal Swahili structure. The object marker often stays inside the verb even when the noun is already understood.

This is a very good question.

Even though the earlier noun is vitabu = books, the meaning after hakuna is not even one book. The understood missing noun is therefore singular:

kitabu

That is why the relative and object markers are singular class 7:

• -cho-
• -ki-

So the idea is not the books that I liked, but rather:

there was not a single book that I liked

If you said the noun explicitly, it would be:

Kati ya vitabu vile vitatu, hakuna kitabu nilichokipenda.

Yes. A more explicit version is:

Kati ya vitabu vile vitatu, hakuna kitabu nilichokipenda.

That makes the hidden noun kitabu visible.

Another natural way is:

Sikupenda hata kimoja kati ya vitabu vile vitatu.

This means:

I did not like even one of those three books.

All of these express basically the same idea, but the original sentence is compact and perfectly understandable in context.