Review: The Death of Vivek Oji

The Death of Vivek Oji by Akwaeke Emezi
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The first book that I've read by lauded new author Akwaeke Emezi, The Death of Vivek Oji is a parable about parental love, accepting your child for who they truly are, and honoring your child by knowing who they truly are. Vivek Oji is a young person who leads a hidden life. Their cousin Osita and a number of female friends know far more about Vivek than their parents, Kavita and Chika, do. And that provides complication when, as the book opens, Vivek dies on the day the market burns. Kavita finds a nude Vivek wrapped in cloth on her doorstep and searches for answers about what happened to Vivek. The answers are ultimately heartbreaking, both for Vivek's parents and for Osita.

Set in Nigeria, the novel allows the reader to see some of the elements of the culture that make it difficult for LGBTQ young people to safely express themselves within their families and in public. Given Emezi's own status as a nonbinary transgendered person, some aspects of the novel appear almost semi-autobiographical, including the Indian-Nigerian marriage between Kavita and Chika, mirroring Emezi's own parents. The structure of the novel, in multiple POVs, with Vivek and Osita in first person and the narrative about Kavita and Chika in third person, occasionally made it harder for me to engage. Vivek's chapters were very short and I felt often, like his parents, that I didn't really know Vivek. I knew some facts about him, but I longed for more. Yet at the same time, given the facts of the author's life, the book has a personal feeling that makes me reticent to critique the time given Vivek. The novel largely explores the effects of Vivek's choices on his parents, extended family, and friends. The irony of Kavita's acceptance at the end of the novel leaves me wondering if there could have been different outcomes had Vivek been more open.

A poignant novel about Nigerian LGBTQ issues...

Interested readers can find more about Emezi in this essay at Brittle Paper.

CW: a transperson dies in this novel, threats of harm against LGBT people, conversion therapy/beating out the gay demons horror.

I received an audio review copy of this book from Penguin Random House Audio and Libro.fm in exchange for an honest review.

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