Were it not for the nature of the imagery used in its pungent scene-setting, the opening of Little Rot, Akwaeke Emezi’s eighth book in six years, might easily be mistaken for romantic fiction. Young, affluent couple Aima and Kalu met in Houston, then returned to Nigeria together, where forgotten girlhood religiosity stirred in Aima. But Kalu, determined to resist social convention, refuses to get married, which is how he comes to be dropping her at the airport so that she can begin a new life in London without him. Instead of boarding her flight, however, she seeks out her “bad gehl” friend Ijendu, who prescribes that age-old remedy for a broken heart: intoxication and a strobe-lit dancefloor. With Kalu soon embarking on his own aching odyssey through the pulsing darkness of the fictional city of New Lagos, could an 11th-hour reconciliation be on the cards?
