God's Children Are Little Broken Things

These nine stories of queer male intimacy brim with simmering secrecy, ecstasy, loneliness and love in their depictions of what it means to be gay in contemporary Nigeria.

A man revisits the university campus where he lost his first love, aware now of what he couldn’t understand then. A daughter returns home to Lagos after the death of her father, where she must face her past – and future – relationship with his longtime partner. A young musician rises to fame at the risk of losing himself, and the man who loves him.

Generations collide, families break and are remade and lovers find their ways to futures – from childhood through adulthood; on university campuses, city centres and neighbourhoods where church bells mingle with the morning call to prayer.

Author Biography

Arinze Ifeakandu was born in Kano, Nigeria. An AKO Caine Prize for African Writing finalist and A Public Space Writing Fellow, he is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. His work has appeared in A Public Space, One Story, Kenyon Review, Guernica, and Redemption Song and Other Stories: The Caine Prize for African Writing 2018. His story “Happy is a Doing Word,” is a winner of the 2023 O. Henry Prize for Short Fiction. God’s Children Are Little Broken Things is Arinze Ifeakandu’s first book, and has received the 2023 Dylan Thomas Prize, the Story Prize Spotlight Award, the 2022 Republic of Consciousness Prize, Finalist for the 2022 Kirkus Prize for Fiction, and is a Finalist for the Lambda Literary Lammy Award for Gay Fiction.