Necessary Fiction by Eloghosa Osunde is an audacious, character‑driven novel structured like a short story collection, following a sprawling cast of queer, trans, non‑binary, and poly individuals living in Lagos, Nigeria. Osunde explores what family, freedom, love, and belonging can mean when one is marginalised in a society where homosexuality is criminalised. Through intimate vignettes and communal “Truth Circles,” characters barter with grief, art, and survival, treating one another with tenderness and forging deep found‑family bonds in defiance of blood‑family exclusion.

Eloghosa Osunde’s prose is vivid and poetic, suffused with musicality, Lagosian pidgin English, and emotional resonance. While the narrative lacks a conventional linear plot, it pulses with interior lives and raw honesty. Characters such as Ziz, Maro, Akin, May, Awele, and Yemisi carry and perform the “necessary fictions” that allow them to endure societal oppression. In its tone‑poem‑like structure, Necessary Fiction becomes a tapestry of voices—flawed, brave, alive—celebrating creativity, resilience, and community in the face of systemic exclusion¹.