Necessary Fiction

From the acclaimed author of Vagabonds!: an audacious and eye-opening exploration of cross-generational queer life in contemporary Nigeria.

‘Necessary Fiction's Nigerians are inseparable from Nigeria itself: brazen, willful, sexy, dynamic, explosive’ MARLON JAMES

'Necessary Fiction lives up to its title and beyond … a vivid, stirring revolution' YRSA DALEY-WARD

‘The ink practically hovers off the page’ KAVEH AKBAR

What makes a family? How is it defined and by whom? Is freedom for everyone?

Across Lagos, Osunde’s characters seek out love for self and their chosen partners, even as they risk ruining relationships with parents, spouses, family and friends. A rolling cast emerges: vibrantly active, stubbornly alive, brazenly flawed. These characters grapple with desire, fear, time, death, and God, forming and breaking unexpected connections; in the process unveiling how they know each other, have loved each other and had their hearts broken in that pursuit.

As they work to establish themselves in the city's 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.

‘A gorgeously deeply humane book, which is indeed, necessary’ NICOLE DENNIS-BENN

‘I’m in awe of Osunde’s writing’ CALEB AZUMAH NELSON

'Osunde’s writing shines … It’s not just beautiful – it’s transformative’ BASSEY IKPI

‘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’ Yrsa Daley-Ward, author of The Terrible

‘I can’t believe how alive Eloghosa Osunde’s Necessary Fiction is … Osunde writes with the cataclysmic dazzle and sneaky spiritual ache of Denis Johnson, but pitches it toward us here in the digital age … The ink practically hovers off the page’ Kaveh Akbar, author of Martyr!

‘This book is exquisite and excruciating. It quickens your pulse and burns inside you for days. With elegant, lean, searing language, Eloghosa Osunde reminds us what it really means to be alive’ Nicole Dennis-Benn, author of Here Comes The Sun

‘Honest, gripping, and alive, Necessary Fiction challenges us to find our own truths amid the masks we wear. Osunde’s writing shines … It’s not just beautiful – it’s transformative’ Bassey Ikpi, author of I’m Telling the Truth But I’m Lying

‘[A] kaleidoscopic view of queer Nigerian life … there’s much to love in this bighearted novel’ Publishers Weekly (starred review)

‘A panoramic look at queer life in Nigeria …Osunde’s prose is beautiful’ Kirkus

Eloghosa Osunde is a Nigerian writer and visual artist, an alumna of the Farafina Creative Writing Workshop, the Caine Prize Workshop and the filmmaking and screenwriting programmes at New York Film Academy. Her short stories have been longlisted for the 2017 Writivism Short Story Prize and published in Catapult, Guernica, Berlin Quarterly and The Paris Review where she has a column, with forthcoming stories in The Georgia Review and Gulf Coast. She is the winner of the 2021 Paris Review Plimpton Prize for Fiction

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