In a pinned tweet on their X page, multi-award winning Nigerian Author, Akwaeke Emezi, has announced a forthcoming novel. Titled Little Rot, the novel runs at 288 pages. Goodreads describes it as a “whirling journey through the city’s dark side, told through the eyes of five people, each determined to run from the twisted powers out to destroy them”. It is set to be published by Riverhead Books and hit the bookshelves by June 18.
Below is a synopsis:
“Aima and Kalu are a longtime couple who have just split. When Kalu, reeling from the breakup, visits an exclusive sex party hosted by his best friend, Ahmed, he makes a decision that will plunge them all into chaos, brutally and suddenly upending their lives. Ola and Souraya, two Nigerian sex workers visiting from Kuala Lumpur, collide into the scene just as everything goes to hell. Sucked into the city’s corrupt and glittering underworld, they’re all looking for a way out, fueled by a desperate needs to escape the dangerous threat that looms over them.”
Emezi is one of the most prolific writers of the contemporary moment, having published seven books in four years across five genres. Their works meld fantasy and reality in thought-provoking ways that challenge our understanding of queerness and spirituality. Most recently, they explored romance in You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty. Little Rot seems to be a weave of all genres then.
Akwaeke Emezi has won many awards for their books and has been featured on the cover of TIME Magazine as a 2021 Next Generation Leader. They are the author of the New York Times bestseller The Death of Vivek Oji, which was longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize; Pet, a finalist for the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature; and Freshwater, which was named a New York Times Notable Book and shortlisted for the PEN/Hemingway Award, the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award, the Lambda Literary Award, and the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize. Selected as a 5 Under 35 honouree by the National Book Foundation, they are based in liminal spaces.
Congratulations, Akwaeke! We look forward to Little Rot.
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