The Fool

A stunningly beautiful debut novel about a Yoruba man recounting his life after his son comes out—and revealing the mislaid parts of himself, the paths not taken along the way

When Niyi hears that his thirty-year-old son, Junior, is gay, the discovery unmoors him. Junior confirms the news and Niyi finds himself uncharacteristically speechless. In the days and weeks afterward, the world around him seems to take on a strange, piercing clarity.

With a sudden burning need to reexamine his life, Niyi writes a letter to Junior, trying to put into words what he wants to say, even though he isn’t even sure what it is. He begins by describing their family history, the line and the land that they both belong to and must continue. But what starts as a clumsy attempt at parenting soon becomes an excavation into Niyi’s past, into the joys and turbulence of his adolescence, the divergent influences of his own parents—and as he continues to write, Niyi unearths more about himself than he has ever cared to acknowledge.

Set across Nigeria, from Kano in the north to the bustling metropolis of Lagos to an unnamed quiet war town in the deep south, The Fool asks: How can you make sense of a life if you came of age in a time and place without a language to speak your heart, without a model to mirror your existence? With an intimate autobiographical force and a sweeping perspective on a nation’s history, The Fool is a profound exploration of the mysteries of other people and the mystery that we are to ourselves.