There is lush tenderness even as the novel’s titular violence hovers over the reader like a specter. There is exploration of self and sexuality, there are friends that become family, there is so much.Īkwaeke is able to render a world that feels vital and true. We see, as the novel unfolds, who Vivek was as a child and the journey that was a life ended too quickly. Even as Vivek is mourned deeply, we discover many of those that are shattered by the loss refused to see and really accept Vivek in life. We are then taken on an incredible journey through and around the life of Vivek, who is a young person from southeastern Nigeria. Subscribe to the Vox Book Club newsletter to stay up to date on all the books we’re reading.What happens to a person denied the space to be themselves? What does it look like to choose yourself? What is it to be, to exist, even against a multifaceted external denial? What can bloom when a person is enveloped in love? Akwaeke Emezi’s brilliant novel, The Death of Vivek Oji, asks these essential kinds of questions and more.Įarly in the novel we are introduced to the tragedy that is its namesake. Thursday, April 29: Virtual live event with author Akwaeke Emezi at 5 pm ET. Here’s the full Vox Book Club schedule for April 2021įriday, April 16: Discussion post on The Death of Vivek Oji published to Vox.com

And at the end of the month, we’ll be meeting up with Akwaeke Emezi live on Zoom. The Death of Vivek Oji is a tricky, intricate book, and we’ll have tons to talk about. As his mother becomes our detective, working desperately to find out what happened to her son, his cousin and lover Osita struggles with dark secrets, and Emezi slips fluently back and forth between Vivek’s life and his death. Vivek Oji is a young Nigerian man who dies in the first sentence of the novel. It’s the story of a life, told in fragments. It’s also a love story, and it’s a coming of age story. It’s a book that doesn’t cleanly fit into one genre or another: It’s a murder mystery of sorts, but it’s never quite clear that there’s been a murder. This April, the Vox Book Club is reading Akwaeke Emezi’s lovely, ferocious kaleidoscope of a novel, The Death of Vivek Oji. The Vox Book Club is linking to to support local and independent booksellers.

The life of vivek oji