Eloghosa Osunde prefaces her debut novel with: ‘There are simple and good and straightforward and well-behaved people, I’m sure. But this is not a book about them.’ On the face of it, she does not disappoint. Set in Lagos – though the city’s ruthless spirit acts more as prime mover than location – greed, deception, violence, hypocrisy, corruption and killer-capitalism prevail. But also breaking through – in a wild, illegal way – are love, tenderness and unflinching honesty as the many characters that inhabit this sprawling and exuberant novel strive to live their lives and be themselves. Not an easy thing if you’re queer in homophobic Nigeria.
The title Vagabonds! is taken from the legal wording used to describe sexual outlaws in Nigeria’s 2014 Same Sex Marriage Prohibition Act. For Osunde it’s a starting point for a work that’s transgressive at many levels. Her characters cross gender and sex boundaries, of course; they also wear masks and shape-shift, slipping in and out of their bodies and moving between life and death and back again. Some characters are clearly defined and memorable: Johnny, the ‘dumb’ chauffeur to a human organ trafficker; Waru, a wise and cherished fashion designer trying to die quietly; Divine and Daisy, a loving couple reconfiguring sex work in a lesbian underworld. But with so many characters and narrative threads, especially in the last third, it’s hard to keep track of who is who and whether one has met them before. Maybe that’s the intention, but it can make for frustrating reading.
