[Hear the story in the author’s voice—audio reading included]

The girls watched as their grandmother fanned out the cash and examined the bills, searching for counterfeits, counting and recounting. Her bangles chattered like teeth on her arms.

Lagos is an immensely populated city. The population figure is so high that there is a running dispute between the National Population Commission and the Lagos government over how many people actually live here.

It ends with a jaded god. Ogbunabali. The god who kills at night. They say he grants a request in exchange for five souls. It is called the ritual of exchange. It is well known. But, like every tale, there are four parts to it. The part you tell. The part I tell. The part we agree not to tell. The part Wiwe tells.

The waiter at the counter watches them. Short-lived glances driven by questions. Questions about these two men, none older than twenty-eight, who walk into a near-empty restaurant on a quiet evening.

He waited for applause but seemed not to care when none came. The campaign was over. Sleek talk and sweet words had lost their necessity.

Many years after the beginning of time, Ajja, after years of childlessness and ridicule, had gone to the gods of the forest to ask for a child to brighten up her old age.

One afternoon, I found a note under my door. Scribbled in pencil on torn paper. No name. Just the words: You cannot lie to a city that knows your footsteps.

Your sight isn't playing tricks, 

I really do want to. 

Intuitively, Tanjy understood that her family couldn’t compete in a social structure purposely and perfectly designed for the elite.

My name is Ego. And I have buried love thrice.

What she felt was well deserved guilt, guilt for the years she treated her sister like a burden, guilt from the fact that her sister was always having a faceoff with death while she was living her best life.

When people see this on the news, they feel sorry that this is the place I call home.

but look at the sky! how it 

spreads! a thing in vastness

While earlier writers used themes of culture and tradition, the more contemporary Nigerian literature has expanded impressively and now draws from the realities of the country’s social processes, from women’s rights and feminism to post-war and post-colonial identity.

I went to my Grandma Mamie’s every summer, sometimes even during the year, but this was the first time Roosevelt had visited me.

A woman leaned her back on a broken wall/ her face a deep secret in her hijab

The connection between my identity as a Black woman and my relationship with my hair goes deep. It means acknowledging the history of my hair and why perms and wigs even exist as hair styling options.

That was the first time she learned that she had to set herself on fire to make other people happy.

Bottles of beer to their mouths, they all anxiously wait for him to at least say something, acknowledging that it is best to let a man crawl out of his shell on his own.