Nigerian writer/ogbanje-at-large Akwaeke Emezi just announced their first romance novel, YOU MADE A FOOL OF DEATH WITH YOUR BEAUTY, will be published under Atria Books in 2022. This is major news for a couple of reasons. Firstly, this is their sixth published work in about four years, which is a feat for any writer. There was Freshwater in 2018, Pet and Se Te Subió El Santo in 2019, The Death Of Vivek Oji in 2020 and Dear Senthuran: A Black Spirit Memoir, which will be released in 2021. Secondly, we get a chance to read more of her work.
Last year, I wrote a romance novel. This year, it sold in a major deal at auction to @AtriaBooks, and that’s how my romance debut YOU MADE A FOOL OF DEATH WITH YOUR BEAUTY will be published next year in 2022!!! 🙌🏾✨🎉 #FoolOfDeath pic.twitter.com/oec8iYFbLT
— akwaeke emezi (@azemezi) February 24, 2021
What’s exciting about Emezi’s work is her ability to glide between genres with very little friction. With Freshwater, a half-fiction half-biography novel, they touch on themes of African spirituality, introducing many to the concept of “ogbanje” ( non-human entity in human flesh). Their ability not to shy away from subject matters is also what makes their work so refreshing. As a self-identified ogbanje (though they also use terms like nonbinary and they/them pronouns), Emezi was able to beautifully articulate navigating gender and humanity through the lens of Igbo spirituality in their work.
Their next novel, PET, dared to imagine a world in which transness is not questioned, or ostracized. PET is a Young Adult fiction and follows a transgender teenager whose biggest issue is not their gender identity, but rather the fact that adult’s around her either do not see the monster that exists in their world or choose to actively ignore them.
It’s nothing short of badassery that Emezi has been able to create such a robust literary canon in a few short years. Rich, complex and honest, their work continues to consistently engage readers in a way that very few writers are able to do.
By creating characters that are central to their own stories, Emezi both legitimizes and reinforces their validity. Their characters don’t explain or ask for permission, they simply.. are. Writers like Emezi are part of a new, but long-overdue, shift in creating fiction with queer characters. While representation is the buzz word of the hour, it’s incredibly important to see writers that look like you and even more important to read about them.
While we don’t have many details of their fifth novel yet, we do know it’s in the romance genre, that it’s about a “young artist struggling to overcome the loss of an old love while inviting a new one in” and that the title, YOU MADE A FOOL OF DEATH WITH YOUR BEAUTY, is long as hell, (Florence + The Machine’s Hunger lyric anyone?). In terms of what themes the novel will explore, it’s hard to say, but if we had to guess: queer love, transformation, and creation in the face of destruction. With a writer as flexible as Emezi though, who’s to say?
