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Necessary Fiction: A Novel Audiobook
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NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY NPR!
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.
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"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!
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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 -
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
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About Eloghosa Osunde
Eloghosa Osunde is a Nigerian writer and artist. An alumna of the Farafina Creative Writing Workshop, the Caine Prize Workshop, and the New York Film Academy, she has been published in The Paris Review, Gulf Coast, Guernica, Catapult, and other venues. She is a winner of the 2021 Plimpton Prize for Fiction, a Miles Morland Scholarship, a 2019 Lambda Literary Fellow, and a 2020 MacDowell Colony Fellow.
About the Narrators
Leon Nixon is a professional actor, playwright, and filmmaker. A Los Angeles native, he has performed in short films, web series, and on stage in dramatic and comedic roles. He is also an improviser and part of the group that appears in the Guinness Book of World Records for Longest Continuous Improv Show.
Pete Cross is an Earphones Award–winning narrator. He holds a BA in theater from the University of Toledo and an MFA in acting from the California Institute of the Arts. His experience on stage includes Carnegie Hall, and he has also acted in film. He has served on the faculty at Cal Arts and with Aquila Morong Studio in Hollywood. He has coached for film and theatrical productions and continues to work with private clients all over the world.