Necessary Fiction: Unabridged edition
From the acclaimed author of Vagabonds!: an audacious and eye-opening exploration of cross-generational queer life in contemporary Nigeria.
‘Necessary Fiction lives up to its title and beyond … a vivid, stirring revolution’ YRSA DALEY-WARD
What makes a family? How is it defined and by whom? Is freedom for everyone?
Across Lagos, one of Africa’s largest urban areas and one of the world’s most dynamic cities, Osunde’s characters seek out love for themselves and their chosen partners, even as they risk ruining relationships with parents, spouses, family, and friends. As the novel unfolds, a rolling cast emerges: vibrantly active, stubbornly alive, brazenly flawed. As these characters grapple with desire, fear, time, death, and God, they form and break unexpected connections, in the process revealing how they know each other, how they have loved each other, and how they had their hearts broken in that pursuit. As they work to establish themselves in the city’s lively worlds of art, music, entertainment, and creative commerce, we meet their collective and individual attempts to reckon with the necessary fiction they carry for survival.
In Necessary Fiction, Eloghosa Osunde explores the paths and dreams, hopes and fears of a dazzling cast of characters who are staking out lives for themselves in today’s Nigeria.
‘I’m in awe of Osunde’s writing’ CALEB AZUMAH NELSON
”'Necessary Fiction's Nigerians are inseparable from Nigeria itself: brazen, willful, sexy, dynamic, explosive. They love hard, fight fierce, and love fiercer. And yet they are forced to the margins of their own society, having to navigate love and happiness under a blanket of fear, danger, and uncertainty. This is where the title becomes gospel, for they need those stories in order to live. When life has risk at every turn, family is chosen, and love is on the edge of the knife, fiction indeed becomes necessary” - Marlon James, Booker Prize-winning author of A Brief History of Seven Killings
”'Necessary Fiction lives up to its title and beyond” - a luminous mirror hall, a prism refracting human need and want, generational patterns and heart work and chosen family carved from the city’s chaotic sprawl. In true Eloghosa Osunde fashion, it’s a vivid, stirring revolution with echoes that transcend time' Yrsa Daley-Ward, author of The Terrible
”'I can’t believe how alive Eloghosa Osunde’s NECESSARY FICTION is, how supersaturated and smart. Osunde writes with the cataclysmic dazzle and sneaky spiritual ache of Denis Johnson, but pitches it toward us here in the digital age. I love their prose, their characters. 'It’s not a small job to guard a tall gate,' they say, early on. What’s the gate? Hustle, heart, privacy, sex, yearning so strong it buckles you. It’s all here. The ink practically hovers off the page” - Kaveh Akbar, author of Martyr!
Praise for Vagabonds!: -
”'You don’t read this novel. You swan dive into it, then gasp in wonder” - Marlon James, author of A Brief History of Seven Killings
”'I’m in awe of Osunde’s writing … I can’t wait for others to delve into the joyous, defiant world she has rendered” - Caleb Azumah Nelson, author of Small Worlds
”'Every year promises the birth of the next literary superstar… Eloghosa Osunde’s VAGABONDS! is an exceptional debut” - i-D
”'A novel as vivid and varied as the city itself” - Harper’s Bazaar