you made a fool of death with your beauty

“With Fool Of Death, it opens up a huge conversation about dating ethics, what things are acceptable or unacceptable,” Emezi says. You know, does it feel real? Is it immersive? Can you step inside the world and the world holds up around you.”

It's how I can tell whether the story is working or not. And I think there's a quality to that, that makes the story good. “We were messy bitches, like, we did not care about many things. “‘I wanted to write a book that felt like me and my friends when we were in our 20s in Brooklyn,” Emezi says. Quite frankly, Emezi is prepared for the conflicted feelings people might have about the characters they’ve created, especially Feyi. But that's also because no one else in the book has survived the losses that Feyi and Alim have survived.” They have reasons for choosing to be together, that really no one else in the book understands. And it directly relates to how much they'll sacrifice for it. “The first of which is how they feel about second chances at love. “The losses that have experienced are pivotal to how they move through the world,” Emezi explains. At the end of the day, however, Emezi is interested in their books facilitating relevant conversations. This tends to position their works as a template on how things should be, rather than a reflection of the current times or sometimes, a guide on how things can be. Their work centers queer characters in disruptive and other times, normalized forms, without fanfare or difficult character arcs. Alongside publishing seven books, across literary fiction, young adult fiction, poetry, and now romance, they serve as an executive producer for the onscreen adaption of their debut novel Freshwater. So I was like, okay, you know, to be fair, this is, what real life is.”Īs one of Nigeria’s leading queer authors, Emezi’s works span several genres and artistic disciplines. “I wasn't really planning for the theme of grief and death to be so present in the book, but it's what the characters wanted. “It was meant to be more fluffy than it ended up,” Emezi says over Zoom. You Made A Fool Of Death With Your Beauty turned out to be a subversive romance novel that also demanded some level of depth of its own.

You made a fool of death with your beauty