Taking us through the underbelly of society, and the people who get trapped there at times, this book was an interesting exploration of queer lives in Nigeria, with myths and tales woven into its fabric.

The story is at times intentionally hard to follow, as spirits slip in and out of characters and most people around are disconcerted, but I thought it was an enjoyable and clever read.

I received an advanced copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Kaleidoscopic, propulsive, sexy and tender - Osunde's prose crackles with energy and unexpected images, and the ending is genuinely joyful (and feels entirely earned!).

There’s no single narrative in Vagabonds!, the debut novel by Nigerian writer Eloghosa Osunde. There’s no hero, no standard plot arc. The novel is like life: teeming, diverse, sometimes chaotic and shapeless, and yet its disparate strands are linked and bound together in ways that are not obvious at first.

It’s a novel set mostly in Lagos, and the city itself is a character in the novel too, a mythical, godlike character who stands above everything and everyone—except the single all-powerful entity who is above even the city itself: money.

Vagabonds! is structured as a series of stories that seem at first unconnected. These stories introduce us to a large and diverse set of characters, mostly marginalised people who are struggling to survive and thrive in the competitive, cut-and-thrust, often callous but sometimes surprisingly connected world of the city.

The stories effortlessly blend myth and reality, the living and the dead. Ghosts and shapeshifters are a fact of life, and characters pass constantly between worlds. All of this happens not just for literary high-jinks, but for a very important reason that Daisy, a lesbian woman in one of the stories, explains:

“We’re ghosts because we have to be, because our lives depend on passing and being passed by. But we’re ghosts who see other ghosts often, who hold them and hug them and fuck them, too, in our bedrooms, doors closed.”

The book opens with a set of definitions of the word “vagabond”. Some will be familiar to international readers, but others will not—at least, they were new to me. In Nigeria, the word refers to people who are gay, lesbian or transgender. Being a vagabond is illegal. Vagabonds must constantly change shape and form in order to survive.

You could read this as a short story collection, and it would still work because the individual stories are so strong and beautifully written. But it’s also more than that—as you read further into the book, you start to see characters recurring, connections forming. The book never coalesces into anything like a traditional novel, but still, those connections do form a story of sorts, a beautiful and horrifying picture of a city and the people who live at its margins.

Vagabonds are made not just from gender or sexual identity but also from poverty. Often, they run into harshness and cruelty at the hands of the rich, the privileged, the ones whose loves and lives are legal. They must hide who they are, go mute, face violence.

They often find solace in each other, but sometimes they find unexpected kindness and understanding from others too. There’s the beautiful story of Gold and her mother:

“Gold was only still here, alive, because she had a mother who asked, ‘What do you want for yourself, my child?’ and listened when she answered, after all. A mother who saw how un-at-home Gold was in her old body, asked, ‘What is your real name?’ and then believed Gold immediately. Life is different with a mother who listens and believes; a parent who welcomes you when you take yourself home to meet her for the first time; who lets a dead name go quietly into the ground.”

Gold’s mother may accept who she is, but the wider society doesn’t. Gold, like so many other vagabonds, is illegal, facing fourteen years in jail for being who she is. But unlike so many of the others, she has her mother alongside her, supporting her. As Gold’s best friend F. says, “But it shouldn’t be rare. Us being loved shouldn’t be rare. What you felt today, is how it should be.”

In case you haven’t guessed yet, I loved this book! At first, I thought the fractured nature of the narrative might make it hard to read, but it wasn’t. Each story was compelling on its own, and they all add up to something much more.

There’s a story in Vagabonds! in which a group of fairygodgirls put a book in the hands of the person who needs it at that particular moment in their lives. This book could be exactly that book for some readers, the kind of book that tells them, in Eloghosa Osunde’s words, “You will be strange, but you won’t be strange alone.” Even if it’s not that book for you, it will still be well worth reading. It’s startlingly original, full of energy and life, shocking in some places and inspiring in others.

It took me a little while to adjust to the rhythm of Vagabonds! but once I did, I was happy to be taken along for the ride. I love the exclamation mark in the title – it gives an idea of the book’s vivacity, its playfulness. But it deals with serious subjects – violence against women, rich vs poor, and the persecution of queer people since the Same Sex Marriage (Prohibition) Bill was passed in Nigeria in 2014.
Lagos is a megacity, a complete world in itself. And that’s just when you consider the living… What if the dead were not just lying in their graves, if they still had agency and a role to play in the world? Might that redress the balance in an unfair place? If only.
It would be easy for Vagabonds! to feel disjointed, jumping as it does from one story to another. That it doesn’t is, I think, an indication of how good the writing is. Much as it is about Lagos, there are things that apply much more widely (I was particularly struck by a passage about money and laws). The only problem with there being stories of so many people is that I wanted to stay with some of them longer.
I’m definitely warming to magical realism. When the writing is good, it’s good, whatever the subject. Eloghosa Osunde’s description of the devil inhabiting different people is chilling. There’s definitely more going on than I could fathom in one reading but please take that as a recommendation – it’s worth coming back to.

Awesome read, I loved it.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for letting me access an advance copy of this book in exchange for my feedback.

ELOGHOSA OSUNDE – VAGABONDS ****

I read this novel in advance of publication through NetGalley in return for an honest review.

In more ways than one, this is not an easy read. The writer is an award-winning young Nigerian writer and visual artist. Set in modern Nigeria, the writing is dense and profound, the dialogue often in dialect, using words which were unfamiliar to me. The story too is difficult, told from the point of view of lesbian women in a country where all but the richest women have no standing, and lesbians have to hide themselves away.

I couldn’t begin to describe the overall story. Capitalism, corruption and oppression are tackled in equal measures. Suffice to say I highlighted many beautifully written poetical and thought-provoking passages – more than any other book I have read recently but they are too abstract to comment on in a review.

If you are up for a book that makes you think, and be grateful for the life you have, and admiration for the resilience of the human spirit, then this is the book for you.

What a stunning book! I loved the writing and there were so many moments where it broke my heart. I can't wait to read more by this author.

A unique creature among books. Hard to justify calling this a novel as opposed to a short story collection but that's probably just a matter of perspective. Some really strong writing in here. Lots of very alive sentences and interesting characters. It's strongest when focusing on the intimate relationships between characters than on the larger society and the points it wants to make about those, even though it evokes the sights, sounds and feeling of contemporary Lagos with great aplomb.

Vagabonds! is a novel about a city, living oppressed, and finding joy, as the streets of Lagos form the location for interwoven stories and scenes. Each section tells different stories, of different characters across the city, the various titular 'vagabonds' who are people living unseen or hiding, and finding new ways to exist. A lot of the stories are about queerness in Nigeria, but they also explore power, corruption and hypocrisy, and the ways in which people are interlinked.

One particular stand out element of the book is the way that Lagos is so important in it, a living, breathing character that causes things to happen. The combination of this with the exploration of different queer lives gives a sense of the importance of place in self and identity, whether you like it or not, and also how places can be given different meanings. Though the stories can often be very brief and with so many characters there's always going to be some moments you connect with more than others, as a whole book it works well, building towards an ending and with enough glimpses of previous characters to feel like it wasn't just completely separate stories.

Displaying a range of characters as they live and love outside what is deemed the norm, Vagabonds! is for people who like their short stories interconnected or enjoy when a city is brought to life and becomes part of the fabric of a book. Sometimes you might get lost in the crowd, but there's a lot of memorable moments and emotion in there.

This is a hard review for me. I was drawn to this book because I love writing from other cultures and countries, as well as the front cover and the storyline sounded really intriguing. The writing style was good and the storyline was good but something just fell flat and I just wasnt gripped by it. Overall it was enjoyable but not one I would rush to read again.

I appreciated many aspects of this novel. Reading the author's short pieces in several literary magazines is what made me want to read their work but it didn't hit the spot like I expected to. While they are very good at the craft of writing, it's an acquired taste.