The story of Vivek Oji begins with his death, naked and wrapped only in smoky fabric, and deposited at the door of his parent's house. The story then goes back in time, beautifully recounting how Vivek's parents met, Vivek's life, and ultimately concludes with revealing the mystery surrounding Vivek's death and how he landed up naked on the porch.

I feel like I grew to know Vivek, his parents, his extended family (aunties, uncle cousin Osita), his friends, and the Nigerian mothers, in Akwaeke Emezi's tale. I could feel how tortured they were, each one struggling to protect themselves but at the same time always questioning the appropriateness of their actions, and trying to do what they believe to be right. Vivek's mother loved him so much, her courage to not give up, inspired me, while at the same time, her pain was visceral and its palpable. (Vivek must have inherited his courage from her.)

There is one clear message shouting to me from the pages of this book:

"There's no beauty without difference and diversity. Love unconditionally." - Rashid Ogunlaru

Read this incredible story of resilience, courage and love.

Literary fiction at its best .A story so beautifully written a story of Nigeria of family life emotions..A book I read late into the night with tears streaming down my face a book that will stay with me.an author I will be following & recommending,#netgalley#faber&faber

The Death of Vivek Oji is a short novel exploring sexuality, gender identity, friendship, and blurred boundaries while looking back at the events leading up to the death of Vivek Oji - both in literal and metaphorical terms.

It’s very much a whistle-stop tour jumping through a stream of consciousness. There are times when you’re a bit confused about what’s going on. But I think that’s part of the magic of Emezi’s writing. It also makes it feel like an opportunity to get a glimpse into Oji’s life, without being too voyeuristic.

It’s beautifully written and it’s wonderfully representative. It’s haunting and heartbreaking, but as ‘death’ also refers to the death of one identity and development of another, it’s also empowering and joyful.

Luscious and heartbreaking. I got teary-eyed when it became too stinging sad, and teary-eyed again when it grew too beautiful.

Impeccable pacing that kept me reading well past midnight and again over my morning coffee. The language demanded to be savoured but I couldn't help but devour it whole.

I really wanted to like this one. There are some raving reviews for this one (and I can totally see why!) it just didn't resonate with me as much.

Things I liked:
- I thought the writing and storytelling was well done. There were some beautiful passages and even though you know Vivek's fate it was still a captivating enough story to the reader to keep reading to learn more about Vivek.
- The themes: coming of age novel, exploring self and sexuality, finding your chosen family.
- Learning about Vivek: For a book about Vivek, he is seemingly kept at an arm's length to readers. Even though you know his fate, it is up to the other charracters in the book: Vivek's family and friends to tell the story of who he really was.

Things that were a miss:
- It took me a while to get into this book and keep up with all of the characters. Had to stop and restart a few times.
- The incestual relationship between Vivek and Ossita (cousins). For me, personally it is really hard to read about incest. I felt there could have been a similar impact making them childhood friends rather than relatives, but I'm sure that the author had their reasons for this.

I opened this book not knowing what to expect (and I really had no idea where this book was going to end up) but the pages fly by. The author has done an amazing job of constructing a beautiful story that is so masterfully woven you feel every moment, ache, and triumph that each character experiences. They have taken the reader to a controversial place in Nigeria, one that exists and needs to be more broadly recognized for what it is. The Death of Vivek Oji opens eyes and paints a beautiful picture ending in unexpected tragedy. 5 Stars.

Thank you so much to netgalley and Faber & Faber for an e-arc copy of this book in exchange for a review.

One afternoon, a mother opens her front door to find the length of her son's body stretched out on the veranda, swaddled in akwete material, his head on her welcome mat. It is the story of an over protective mother and a distant father, and the heart-wrenching tale of one family's struggle to understand their child, just as Vivek learns to recognise himself.

As soon as I started reading this, I knew this would be a favourite. The writing is just so beautiful and engaging. This book hurt me.

Vivek is of dual heritage, Nigerian and Indian, and his traditional parents see his individuality and expression as an illness.
The does not focus on his death, instead using it a focal point to delve deeper into familial relationships, grief, love and guilt.

This was stunning and I cannot do it justice.
This is an immediate buy for me.

It's in the title. Vivek Oji dies. Knowing that couldn't stop me from caring about Vivek and his death broke my heart. Emezi paints vivid pictures that sear onto the mind and linger, making you fully connect with the story. It's been 2 days since I finished the book, but I am still grappling with its transcendence. It's a defiant book, which dares you to predict it.
A perfect pick for book clubs, I cannot recommend it enough.

Full Review has been posted at:
https://thatcommonreader.wordpress.com/2020/08/22/the-death-of-vivek-oji-by-akwaeke-emezi/

“Somewhere, you see, in the river of time, I am already alive”
.
.
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On the day that Vivek was born, his grandmother died. He was marked with the same scar in the shape of a limp starfish that Ahunna had had on her foot. Born “after death and into grief” Vivek’s “whole life was a mourning.” A start that foretold the end


Set in southeastern Nigeria, The Death of Vivek Oji starts and ends with a stack of photographs. Told from multiple viewpoints, it feels as if this fragmented structure offers snapshots of Vivek at various points of his life. The boy catching the sunlight trying on his mother’s dowry jewellery, the adolescent peering through the window at his cousin Osita and his girlfriend Elizabeth, the long-haired student sleeping in a plumeria tree. The people that love Vivek offer up their perceptions of him, but no-one sees the whole leaving the reader to piece the parts together. It’s the need to be seen that ultimately leads to Vivek’s death
“If nobody sees you, are you still there”


Vivek is forced to live a life of half truths. His gender and sexual identities are reserved for a handful of trusted friends. The use of male pronouns throughout the novel seems to accentuate a sense of entrapment. Meanwhile the damage of being forced to hide your true self splinters lives and relationships throughout the book


Powerful and visceral, there’s violence punctuated by moments of great tenderness. A caved-in skull followed by the soft part at the back of a knee that must be kissed. Vivek’s mother’s grief, particularly when she thinks she’s failed her child, is hard to read in places. There’s a sense of absolution at the end, but it feels faint against the unresolved issues for those that remain. Brilliant and brutal

I have no words to describe the feelings swirling through me as I finished this book. The ending brought me to tears and the writing was lyrical and consistently beautiful. This is the first time I've had to stop my reading and actually go find tabs to mark quotes that I never want to lose. The story itself is so moving - it starts with the death of Vivek Oji and then goes through the events and circumstances that brought us there. I can't recommend this book enough.

I enjoyed this, but felt like I would have appreciated more from Vivek's point of view. I consistently enjoyed those chapters the most! Otherwise, I found their writing compelling and am looking forward to picking up Pet as well.

The Death of Vivek Oji by Akwaeke Emezi, is an adult fiction, LGBTQ+ contemporary set in a town of southeastern Nigeria, about the main character named Vivek Oji, who was figuring out his own identity and his life. Vivek suffers disorienting blackouts, moments of disconnection between self and surroundings.

Author's lucid narrative style has bought the character of Vivek Oji and Osita to real life. It's narrated in two time frames, one where Vivek's mother tries her best to uncover the truth behind her son's sudden death and who bought his body back to his house. Who killed Vivek Oji? Was it someone who knew him?

And another time frame is about Vivek's life and his friends - Osita, Elizabeth, etc. Many characters in this book are coming of age and figuring out their self, restricted by the bounds of society. Also, we see two POVs in this book - Vivek and Osita, his cousin.

This one is a bittersweet yet powerfully moving story. The ending was phenomenal. Even thought the book is under 250 pages, the prose is beautiful and it will keep you thinking even after you have long finished the book. I would highly recommend you all to pick this book.
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Thank You to NetGalley and Publisher - Riverhead Books for providing me with the e-copy in exchange of a honest opinion.

The Death of Vivek Oji by Akwaeke Emezi
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

A story of love, grief, secrets and family set in Nigeria. This book explores sexuality and gender identity but at it’s heart it is about the dynamics of human relationships.

This novel is so well written; it is non-linear and uses local dialect but never feels confusing. Utterly emotional and it feels important and vital.

I was totally invested in this and will be thinking about this for a long time to come.

Beautiful poetic writing.
A vivid portrait of contemporary Nigeria. Cultural prejudices of the past, expresssed by the older generation of Vivek's parents and relatives, and real hope for future acceptance of non-binary lives in the younger generation of Vivek's friends.
Will definitely recommend this title to our customers.

This was such a satisfying read.

Emezi's writing is so fluid, so smooth and inviting; the images flowing into one another. The characters are enchanting, flawed, raw. They blur the boundary between the worldly and other-worldly; the human and the more-than-human world. All edges are blurred, all binaries destroyed. The writing is authentic and evocative. It’s never ‘dumbed down’ for a Western or English-speaking audience.

The story itself is beautiful and heartbreaking. I didn’t know much about the plot at all, and that worked really well for this novel. The first sentence draws you in. The rest of the novel is equally as captivating, although I did take my time reading to savour every last sentence.

I've read two of Emezi’s three books now, and I cannot recommend this author highly enough!

I will also be posting this review on Goodreads and my Instagram, @_dizzyreads.

[Content warnings: death, incest, rape, infidelity, abuse, misogyny]

I don't know how Emezi does it, but they managed to make Vivek's story breathtaking.

"The Death of Vivek Oji" is bold as it is beautiful. Told in both first person perspectives of Vivek and cousin Osita as well as third person points of view, Vivek's chapters are shorter because his* life was short. But then his narration becomes slightly longer as he starts to live. The timeline is not linear but it was never hard to follow. It has its own flow of interconnected events and characters' thoughts instead of being in chronological order. Sometimes Vivek was dead and sometimes he was not. It is haunting and works strangely well. (* I use he/him/his pronouns for Vivek because that is what Emezi used throughout most of the book. The last pronoun referring to Vivek by Osita is also masculine.)

The deliberate choice of including Igbo vocabulary into conversations and narration feels very intimate. Sentences reading like direct translations of Igbo vividly reflects the Nigerian setting.

In "The Death of Vivek Oji", everything is intertwined: the idea of life and death, discovery of love and sex and relationships, exploration of gender and sexuality, and finding roots and home. The eerie atmosphere of the book is almost paranormal. And this ghostly element plays into every part of the story as well.

With the main theme being queer identities, there are also implicit pansexuality and gender fluidity. The friendship between Vivek, Osita, Juju, Elizabeth, Somto, and Olunne is precious. "They barely understood him themselves, but they loved him, and that had been enough." An important part of the story is also about the nature of Vivek and Osita's relationship. They are cousins, so their love is incestuous. But this paints the picture of Vivek so well and heightens all his struggles. I find myself feeling okay about their tender yet tabooed relationship.

There are two things I cannot fully enjoy. One is the truth of Vivek's death. Compared to the intensity and beauty of the whole book, it falls flat even though that might be the most meaningful ending possible. Another is the hysteria of older women. Far too often we have literary fiction depicting hysterical women, and I just cannot seem to forget about the occasional ridiculousness of Mary and Kavita.

The book is dark and painful and joyous. The death of Vivek is not only the death of a living person, but the death of a past identity. It is fear that kills, but it is also killing that liberates in "The Death of Vivek Oji."

Compelling, poignant and powerfully written, this novel was refreshingly deep. It explores identity, the ties of family, sexuality, love and the fear of being different in a conservative Nigeria. Despite the serious subject matter, the prose is engaging and seductive, drawing the reader into a web of lies and half-truths. I was left guessing until the end of the novel what actually happened to Vivek Oji.

Beautiful and heartbreaking. This story explores culture, family, and how Vivek comes to terms with himself in Nigeria. Obviously the reader knows that Vivek dies. Through flashbacks and present day points of view from various people in his world, Vivek's life is laid out with a bittersweet foreshadowing of the result. At times, Ms. Emezi's writing is actual poetry, a beautiful read on its own. Combine this with emotional and intimate subject matter and the result is a very impactful story.

Book Review 🍂The Death of Vivek Oji by Akwaeke Emezi

“I’m not what anyone thinks I am. I never was. I didn’t have the mouth to put into words, to say what was wrong, to change the things I felt I needed to change. And every day it was difficult, walking around and knowing that people saw me one way, knowing that they were wrong, so completely wrong, that the real me was invisible to them. So: If nobody sees you, are you still there?”

After finishing Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi and absolutely loving it, I jumped at the chance to read their next novel.

The Death of Vivek Oji is a misnomer. The book is much more about Vivek’s life and their search for identity.

Vivek’s mother, Kavita, searches for the answers to her son’s death and the circumstances that led to it. The story is narrated by Vivek, his cousin Osita and an omniscient narrator in a non linear structure.
Vivek and Osita are drawn closer, surrounded by their close knit friendship group who are all struggling to balance their families expectations and their own desires and sexualities. As the children of the Nigerwives (the foreign born women married to Nigerian men) they are bonded by their otherness and coming of age dilemmas. Set in 1998, in a town in the south of Nigeria the story is woven against a backdrop of political tensions and social issues that I wished I knew more about and it set me off on a research quest.

Vivek is by far the most interesting character. Born on the day his grandmother dies, Vivek has a birthmark identical to the starfish shaped scar his grandmother had. As well as struggling with black outs which mark him as a strange person, he also explores his gender identity. As he becomes more flamboyant the group fear for his safety in an environment of rigid gender norms.
I would have loved to have heard more of the story in Vivek’s voice. There is relatively little.

Emezi explores the idea that death is not the end and our own selves exist beyond what we experience in our everyday reality. Their masterful prose perfectly captures the emotions of the characters, particularly their grief.

Compulsively readable, full of unforgettable characters this short, tender novel is highly deserving of a wide audience.

Thanks to @netgalley and @faberbooks for my eARC

The Death of Vivek Oji was a powerful, yet heartbreaking story of Vivek’s short life. When Vivek dies, his mother has a hard time accepting the fact that he is gone and tries to question all of his friends to see what they are hiding. Vivek hid his true identity from his family and was only his true self with his cousin and friends. Sometimes Vivek wanted to be referred to as he but other times he preferred female pronouns and the name Nnemdi. Because of the culture he was born into he was afraid to be himself. It was heartbreaking to see what he went through but it was also great seeing how her friends came together to be there for her and accepted Nnemdi for who she was.

There was one chapter in the middle about the riot that seemed out of place. As I kept reading I understand what the author was trying to accomplish but at the time it was very disjointed and it didn’t really play a role in the story. At times I also struggled with the relationship between Vivek and Osita.

Thanks @netgalley for the ARC for my honest review!

Will be posted on Instagram, Amazon and Barnes and Noble as well.