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Two Intimate Novels About Gay Men’s Self-Understanding
Somtochukwu’s ‘And Then He Sang a Lullaby’ and Erebia’s ‘Pedro & Daniel’
For Pride Month, here are two beautiful novels about gay men who face life-threatening crises and are challenged to accept themselves and each other.
Though the doctor warned Mrs. Akasike “Don’t try again,” she did become pregnant. Though her husband looked for blood donors, she died. Though the baby’s grandmother called him Afamefula, the name that stuck was August, the one he’d originally received in the hospital. And, when August grows up, though he has a relationship with a woman, he’s also interested in men.
August’s story intertwines with that of another young man, Segun. Segun’s lover, Tanko, is beaten and dragged away by police after being scoped out by homophobic classmates who are no kinder than “Sani Abacha or Obasanjo or General Buhari, people who could kill entire families and had many times broken his mother’s bones.”
A powerfully affecting story of shame and secrecy amid modern repression in Nigeria, and of self-awareness that unfolds in complex ways with the will to live and…
