Lagos Will Be Hard For You

These stories are an excavation of what it means to be at the

labyrinthine crossroads of desire, ambition, and tradition.

An almost-blind mother pawns her daughter off to save her. A grieving son must bury his Muslim father in twenty-four hours in the thick of winter. A doctor battles to save her partner from himself. Desperation makes a young businesswoman seek out a spiritual experience. Two men kidnap a White man to fight the infiltration of oil companies in Southern Nigeria. A boy escapes his bipolar mother. 

Ayotola Tehingbola’s debut is a contemporary collection of short stories, set between Nigeria and the US, which explores the constant straddling of two worlds: the need to make sense of home, and the weight of being lost and out of place in a new world.