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‘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

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

Publisher Review

‘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

‘A glorious, ambitious portrait of queer lives in Nigeria. A vital work for our times’ Irenosen Okojie, author of Nudibrach

‘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