LITTLE ROT

A harrowing descent into the New Lagos.

Aima thought that she and Kalu were building a life together when they moved to the United States, but his unwillingness to marry becomes more than her faith can bear. After she ends their relationship, they travel home together. It’s Friday evening when Aima and Kalu touch down in Nigeria and go their separate ways. Aima reconnects with an old friend, and giving in to one temptation after another leads her into an underworld she didn’t even know existed. Kalu also reaches out to someone from his past, thinking he knows what he’s getting into when he shows up at one of Ahmed’s exclusive sex parties. All he wants is to forget about Aima for a while, but he ends his evening by making an enemy of a pastor with a following of millions and a taste for domination. Several significant characters weave in and out of this narrative, but none of them can escape the cruelty and hypocrisy of Nigeria’s most populous city as this author depicts it. As they did in The Death of Vivek Oji (2020), Emezi offers a grim vision of what it means to be queer in a culture in which same-sex love is outlawed. Similarly, Emezi presents a culture in which it seems like the only women who are allowed to express their sexuality are sex workers and in which sex work is the surest route to financial independence for a woman—if it doesn’t destroy her. Overall, though, this novel feels more like You Made a Fool of Death With Your Beauty (2022) than its predecessor. Drama, mystery, beautiful clothes, expensive cars, explosive sex…these are all the hallmarks of a particular brand of escapist fiction, but Emezi takes readers to an abyss from which there is no escape.

Contemporary romance for cynics and nihilists.