Necessary Fiction Paperback by Eloghosa Osunde

Product Details

• Publisher: Riverhead Books (2026-07-21)
• Language: English
• Paperback: 320 pages
• ISBN-13: 9780593851227
• Item Weight: 255.15 grams
• Dimensions: 20.8 x 13.89 x 1.73 cm

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY NPR

“I want to take the fact that I’m here seriously, because it’s serious. That lesson is so much harder than I thought.” – from Necessary Fiction


In Eloghosa Osunde’s powerful novel, Lagos, Nigeria is the dynamic backdrop to the ambitions and desires of a vast array of characters, each of whom refuse to be defined by others. There is Ziz, a hardcore hustler. Maro and his elusive father, Tega. May and her steady rotation of lovers. Nollywood power couple Ifechi and Tajudeen Adams. They and dozens more — of varying generations and sexualities — grapple with the stories they carry within themselves to survive. In Necessary Fiction, award-winning author Osunde has created a vividly queer world that is at once tumultuous and intense, intimate and tender, and above all deeply human.

About the Author

Eloghosa Osunde is an award-winning writer and multidisciplinary artist. Winner of the Museum of the African Diaspora's African Literary Award, the Plimpton Prize for Fiction, and an American Society of Magazine Editors 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 The Paris Review, Granta, The Best American Short Stories, The 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