Little Rot lives up to its title – I could feel the glittering worms of New Lagos slither up my torso as I frantically turned the pages & tried my best to unravel the knots of corruption. 

There’s a list of content warnings at the bottom of my review. Please read them if you are at all sensitive to dark & disturbing topics, often graphically portrayed.

We follow 5 narrators whose lives are impossibly entwined, though only us readers get a chance to see the full picture. 

Aima has just left her longtime boyfriend, Kalu – she reconnected with her sense of religion and morality and only wants to stay with him if they marry. Kalu, who just wants to be with her and not feel that sort of pressure, releases his stress and anguish at his best friend Ahmed’s sex party. But there, he makes an impulsive decision that puts all of them in danger. And when sex workers Ola and Souraya are visiting home on a short trip, their paths cross with the trio and they, too, are plunged into the corrupt underworld. All five of them reveal secrets, make impossible decisions, and are pushed to their very limits.

There are different days and timelines shared, but I recommend letting things wash over you and living in each gut punch of a moment. It’s not a mystery – I think most folks will see where things are going – but let yourself exist in the narrators’ limited viewpoints and absorb their fear and lust and calculated movements. 

Each character is EXCEPTIONALLY written. I saw them in full, little rot and all. These are all deeply morally gray people, and they may repulse you or frighten you at times. But you might also lean in and quietly root for them, wondering how they’ll push through this weekend unscathed (though certainly not unscarred).

Aima is the outlier, and an interesting foil to the rest. She’s seeking (what she believes to be) a better way, and she’s trembling and earnest on her quest for purity and morality. She makes messy choices and definitely needs time to work through her self-hatred and disgust of deviance.

And on the other hand, Ahmed also initially has pure intentions around embracing deviance. His sex parties are meant to encourage openness and joy and acceptance of queerness and kink, but unfortunately they end up opening a portal to a deeper layer of the city; an underbelly filled with vileness and corruption.

Little Rot is a story about daring to be vulnerable, about the ways we shield ourselves, about sex and violence all wrapped up in each other in grabs for power, and how scarily close we all are to spiraling. 

Reality is a mess, and Emezi forces us to LOOK. To witness. And something I always find fascinating about their work is that they’re never dictating how we as readers are supposed to feel. So lean into your shock, horror, and disgust … and maybe you’ll recognize the darkness within your own life.

CW: murder, graphic sexual violence, rape, pedophilia, child abuse, guns, vomit, trafficking, kidnapping, homophobia, transphobia, religious bigotry, drug use, infidelity

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(I received an advance reader copy of this book; this is my honest review.)