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Summary
Summary
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORKER
LONGLISTED FOR THE CENTER FOR FICTION FIRST NOVEL PRIZE AND THE VCU CABELL FIRST NOVELIST AWARD
"If you read one debut novel in 2022, this should be it." -- Los Angeles Times
In the bustling streets and cloistered homes of Lagos, a cast of vivid characters--some haunted, some defiant--navigate danger, demons, and love in a quest to lead true lives.
As in Nigeria, vagabonds are those whose existence is literally outlawed: the queer, the poor, the displaced, the footloose and rogue spirits. They are those who inhabit transient spaces, who make their paths and move invisibly, who embrace apparitions, old vengeances and alternative realities. Eloghosa Osunde's brave, fiercely inventive novel traces a wild array of characters for whom life itself is a form of resistance: a driver for a debauched politician with the power to command life and death; a legendary fashion designer who gives birth to a grown daughter; a lesbian couple whose tender relationship sheds unexpected light on their experience with underground sex work; a wife and mother who attends a secret spiritual gathering that shifts her world. As their lives intertwine--in bustling markets and underground clubs, churches and hotel rooms--vagabonds are seized and challenged by spirits who command the city's dark energy. Whether running from danger, meeting with secret lovers, finding their identities, or vanquishing their shadowselves, Osunde's characters confront and support one another, before converging for the once-in-a-lifetime gathering that gives the book its unexpectedly joyous conclusion.
Blending unvarnished realism with myth and fantasy, Vagabonds! is a vital work of imagination that takes us deep inside the hearts, minds, and bodies of a people in duress--and in triumph.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Osunde's magnificent magical realist debut crafts a mosaic of struggle and pain in Lagos held together by Tatafo, a supernatural choruslike figure who does the bidding of "cityspirit" Eko. Tatafo observes the array of abuse, poverty, and other oppressive situations inflicted on the characters, whose hardships are largely the result of homophobia and transphobia. A young man agrees to be mute in exchange for a cushy job as driver for a black market organ harvester, an agreement that his colleague and lover tragically fails to keep. A devil avenges a girl who was sexually abused by her uncle. Spirits known as "Fairygodgirls" give people books to help them understand themselves and discover new possibilities, as with a teenage girl who reads an account of queer love by Akwaeke Emezi. Women abused by their husbands discover a way to vanish into thin air. A trans maid finds unexpected support from her employer, with whom she forms a sisterly relationship, and a lesbian couple copes with their family's meager concessions of acceptance: "date a girl that looks like a girl. Somebody they can mistake for your friend." The gorgeous, redemptive ending pulls off a triumphant celebration of queer survival. Throughout, Osunde crafts compassionate prose and seamlessly combines magic and grit. This is a stunning introduction to a bold new writer. Agent: Jacqueline Ko, Wylie Agency. (Mar.)
Guardian Review
Set in and around Lagos, Eloghosa Osunde's raucous debut is dotted with glimpses of the city's famous nightlife. At a party in the Old Ikoyi district, "[the] apartment was high out of its mind. The bodies inside were teeming with energy ¿ They could turn the music down, but why? It was a good night to feel this alive. A great night to feel the beat in your thighs, in your stomach, in your chest, pounding through your veins. You can't breathe, sure, but do you want to? This loud love, the rapid-fire desire, all of it is what resuscitates you after all, is what makes you want to love the world again." Even when it confronts darkness in its condemnation of Nigeria's political and religious corruption and homophobic legislation, Osunde's partly magical realist novel is imbued with this rich sense of the kinetic and the possible. As intimated by the titular exclamation mark, it is a loud work. It boldly rails against the pernicious sexual orthodoxies and hypocrisies of Nigerian life. It also joyfully resists conventional formal boundaries, both linguistic and generic. Written in "standard" and pidgin English, adopting prosaic and poetic modes, Vagabonds! is a kind of queer phantasmagoria. It consists of short story-like snapshots about disfranchised dreamers and otherworldly beings living in Lagos's thrall, all drawn with Osunde's skill for foregrounding moments of quiet connection amid metropolitan cacophony. A celebrity seamstress who must hide her relationship with another woman gives birth to a preternaturally wise, shamanic daughter. A gay chauffeur is made horrifically aware of how dangerous it is for him to love. A group of abused wives create a safe space in which to share their trauma - and begin to disappear. A pair of sex workers find transcendental solace in their devotion to one another. A corrupt politician gets more than he bargained for - or perhaps his just deserts - in an encounter with an AI rent boy. The fantastical tone of the writing throughout serves to draw attention to the speciousness of othering whole groups of society. It also underscores the illusory nature of binary distinctions between "us" and "them". Most movingly, it highlights how the experiences of persecution can make one feel strange to oneself. The thread that holds together these surreal and hyperreal sketches, not always effectively, is the character arc of Tatafo. Tatafo is a mercurial presence, one of the underlings of Lagos's presiding spirit, Èkó. Tatafo is sent into the city to spy on its inhabitants. At the unjust Èkó's command, Tatafo wreaks havoc, sustains inequality and stokes hunger for excess. But soon enough, Tatafo begins to question Èkó's autocratic regime. He finds himself ejected from Èkó's inner circle, full of questions and bent on change. While the mobility of the narrative shape makes Vagabonds! an energising read, there are moments when episodic similarities in tone, texture and content undermine the reader's immersion in this bustling world. Underdogs, in their different guises, are always worthy of empathy. The powerful are unfailingly malevolent. Feelings are strongly felt. Especially at the beginning of the novel's final act, as the tales become more compressed and fleeting, one might question the purpose of the narrative's meandering structure. The slightly abrupt and unexpected conclusion - an imagined reckoning between the city's elites and armies of the dispossessed - offers some answers, and uplifting hope too. But it is a long and wiggling route towards this culmination. Overwhelmingly, what readers will be struck by is the powerful sense of freshness, newness and aliveness here. Osunde gives readers a visionary version of what Lagos is and what it could be. Reverberating with musicality and shot through with innovative figurative language, this patchworked, fabulist novel messily and mischievously appeals for a freer and more open Nigeria. In its experimental celebration of individuality, Vagabonds! is always defiantly and resolutely itself.
Kirkus Review
A powerful debut novel about the power of love and stories to save people shunned by society for being themselves. The tale is told in interconnected short stories held together by a chorus of "monitoring spirits" who gather the stories of the people of Lagos and deliver them to the "cityspirit," Èkó. In Osunde's book, the people of Nigeria know for a fact that spirits at a night market might take them to another space, that a group of women can summon a force to take them away from the violence in their lives, that the powerful can kill as they please, and that anyone can be arrested or killed for being themselves. The vagabonds of Lagos might be gay or lesbian, transgender, unwilling to conform to gender norms, or generally out of step with the dominant society. In "Johnny Just Come," Aniekan changes his name to Johnny and moves from a small town to Lagos to drive for a trafficker in human organs. Johnny's job is to drive and be silent, and he does both so well he loses his voice, his conscience, and his mind just as he discovers his love for a man named Livinus. "After God, Fear Women" shows how domestic violence becomes normalized for men and offers a kind of hope in the form of a power that carries women up into the sky. All of the stories are set in a Nigeria where magic and violence are as common as air and sunlight and outsiders can see the world more clearly than anyone else. "You can see a lot of things better from the outside, you know? For example, I can see now that, together, vagabonds are the city's power. We're its charge and circuit. It cannot exist without us. It stands on us….It's why I'm telling you this story." This clarity of vision often leads to violence and even death, but Osunde handles both with a compassionate and ultimately inspiring touch. Osunde revels in the joy of storytelling to render a city and its outsiders in all their flaws and glory. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Nigerian artist and writer Osunde's debut novel, set in the hustle and bustle of Lagos, is partly narrated by an omnipresent monitor--is it the city's essence, a god, the devil?--who is privy to the lives of a huge cast of characters, the vagabonds of the title. Each chapter feels like a complete story on its own, with larger-than-life, mostly queer individuals who lose or find themselves in light of the fate they're dealt and amidst relationships that destroy or strengthen them. This is an arresting and dazzling tale with a surprising elixir of lyricism and pidgin that leaves readers guessing whether or not Osunde's metaphors convey the itinerant existence of those who are contemplating their next move in this life or in the next. A mixture of folklore and spiritual fervor plays narrative tricks on the reader while also providing searing social commentary on forces that affect Nigerian citizens, such as toxic masculinity, antigay laws and attitudes, and other hindrances to personal freedoms and fulfillment. Osunde's inventive and unique story releases its message like a confetti of percipience, teasing out meaning and veering onto thought-provoking tangents and snippets of intrigue that initially feel familiar but which morph into something unsettling yet wondrous.
Library Journal Review
DEBUT In 2014, Nigeria's president enacted a draconian law targeting LGBTQ+ residents with torture and imprisonment for freely loving the person of their choice. Marginalized, forced underground, or compelled to exist in two different skins, gay, lesbian, transgender, and nonbinary Nigerians still manage to overcome boundaries and soar with pride in this bold, erotic first novel from Lambda Literary Fellow Osunde. Blending stark truth with a jolt of magic realism, the narrative prominently presents the devil as a force for good, with Osunde creating vivid characters whose emotions run the gamut from shame and desperation to joyous abandon as they seek compassion and acceptance. These so-called vagabonds, introduced in a series of vignettes, hide in plain sight in Lagos, ranging from a single father who's unaware of his daughter's sexual abuse, to a mother who will die to protect her gender-neutral child, Gold. Readers will witness a dance of seduction between two beautiful women who eschew the gazes of men, and they'll recoil from the violent end to the burgeoning love between Johnny and Livinus. VERDICT Osunde writes like the visual artist they are, having directed and produced Tatafo, a forthcoming film based on this novel. Their vibrant style breathes life into people whom hypocritical politicians would prefer remain hidden. Ideal for readers of Akwaeke Emezi.--Sally Bissell