Eloghosa Osunde in conversation with Bassey Ikpi
City Lights and Riverhead books celebrate the publication of
Necessary Fiction
By Eloghosa Osunde
Published by Riverhead Books
From the acclaimed author of Vagabonds!: an audacious and eye-opening exploration of cross-generational queer life in Nigeria.
What makes a family? How is it defined and by whom? Is freedom for everyone?
In Necessary Fiction, Eloghosa Osunde poses these provocative questions and many more while exploring the paths and dreams, hopes and fears of more than two dozen characters who are staking out lives for themselves in contemporary Nigeria.
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 self 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. 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 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.
Eloghosa Osunde is an award-winning writer and multidisciplinary artist. Winner of MoAD’s African Literary Award, the Plimpton Prize for Fiction, and an ASME Award for Fiction, they are the author of the critically acclaimed novel Vagabonds!, which was a New York Times Editors Choice and a New Yorker Best Book of the Year. Their writing has been published in Paris Review, Granta, BASS, Georgia Review, Guernica, and elsewhere. They move between Nigeria, Nairobi, New York City, and wherever else their work calls. They can be found online at eloghosaosunde.com
Bassey Ikpi is a New York Times bestselling author, mental health advocate, and internationally acclaimed poet. Her memoir, I’m Telling the Truth, but I’m Lying, an instant bestseller, received widespread recognition for its powerful exploration of mental health, praised by Essence and Audible alike. A former Def Poetry Jam cast member, Bassey is a passionate public speaker and the founder of The Siwe Project, which promotes mental health awareness through initiatives like #NoShameDay. She regularly consults with brands on mental health advocacy and continues to raise awareness through her writing, speaking, and media appearances.
Praise for Necessary Fiction
“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
“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. A gorgeously deeply humane book, which is indeed, necessary.”—Nicole Dennis-Benn, author of Here Comes the Sun and Patsy
“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. 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!
“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 bone and The Terrible
“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
Made possible by support from the City Lights Foundation