Necessary Fiction

‘A vital work for our times’ Irenosen Okojie

‘Radical, gorgeous … a queer love song, honouring chosen family’ Big Issue

‘Beautiful … this is prose worth spending time with’ Marie Claire

‘A gorgeously deeply humane book’ Nicole Dennis-Benn

‘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, a rolling cast of unforgettable characters seek out love in all its forms, daring to push all other relationships – with partners, family and friends – to the brink in the process. As they form and break unexpected connections, they reveal how they know each other, have loved each other and had their hearts broken in that pursuit.

Stubbornly alive and brazenly flawed, they work to establish themselves in the city’s worlds of art, music, entertainment and creativity while reckoning with desire, fear, death and God. Here, we witness their collective and individual attempts to grapple with the necessary fictions that they all carry for survival.

This is a shimmering, defiant cross-generational portrait of what it means to be queer in contemporary Nigeria.

‘Both deeply earnest and unique’ Vulture

‘Unabashedly queer, complicated and occasionally outright hopeful’ NPR

‘Osunde is brilliant at character, giving the cast rich, knotty backstories that unfold in bursts of revelation’ TLS

Necessary Fiction's Nigerians are inseparable from Nigeria itself: brazen, willful, sexy, dynamic, explosive Marlon James, author of A Brief History of Seven Killings

‘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