Photographs, it would seem, are the Chekov’s gun of this story. The second chapter begins with the line ‘ If this story was a stack of photographs,’ establishing the visual sense that will permeate this novel, as well as foreshadowing the importance of photographs that will become a crux in the narrative. This is a very visual and visceral novel and it would be no surprise if readers recall moments more like a scene from a film than words on a page. Vivek’s death is not a spoiler, it is on the cover and is mentioned in the opening line of the novel, but the picture of it is incomplete and slowly washes into view towards a total completion by the end of the novel. Emezi has a finely tuned instrument of storytelling here, moving the narrative like a champion chess player positions their pieces on a board to construct the perfect checkmate.

The story rotates between a third-person narrative to first person chapters from the perspective of Vivek and the cousin Osita, while also moving back and forth across the timeline.

This is a book that is difficult to set down once opened and one that is brave and bold by pointedly addressing exactly what it sets out to say in the most beautiful ways possible. This is a book that can be dissected and give way to voluminous discourse while still being accessible and understood by any reader, a trait the most lauded of popular American classics tend to share. Their language is so fluid and remarkable, like the best of poetry, and is endlessly inviting. ‘ Osita wished, much later, that he'd told Vivek the truth then, that he was so beautiful he made the air around him dull.’Īkwaeke Emezi has an undeniable gift for prose and storytelling. With most of the story taking place in 1998 surrounding the death of dictator Sani Abacha Emezi entwines Nigerian social issues with their characters awakenings of identity in a novel so moving, so exquisitely crafted it deserves to become a modern Classic. Central to these lives is Vivek, whose death casts a long shadow over the novel as Emezi deftly weaves past and a post-death present to expertly tease tension and narrative reveals to absolute perfection. The follow up to their incredibly imaginative and important 2018 novel Freshwater-which set such a high bar I didn’t think possible to clear-and the wonderful 2019 YA novel Pet, Emezi returns with a bittersweet and powerfully moving story set in their home of Nigeria and follows the lives of characters who, for a variety of reasons, don’t quite fit in.

Have you ever wondered what it felt like finishing a novel before it was dubbed a “Classic?” Upon turning the final page in Akwaeke Emezi’s The Death of Vivek Oji I had the feeling I was finishing something that deserves to be important for a long time and could likely be a modern Classic. ‘ It was the clearest terror and pleasure I had ever known.’

The death of vivek