ONE LEG ON EARTH

A transplant to Lagos faces an unexpected pregnancy during a mysterious outbreak of suicides among expectant mothers in the city.

Yosoye Bakare has just finished college and is beginning her year in the National Youth Service Corps, in which all young Nigerian graduates are assigned a job outside their home state in order to be immersed in new communities. To her surprise, Yosoye has been placed in desirable Lagos; her degree in mass communications has landed her at an architectural firm working on Omi City, a land reclamation project. “We pulled this land back from the water,” says the architect at the helm of the endeavor. “It is born again.” Yosoye is determined to make the most of her new cosmopolitan life, but she soon becomes pregnant after a one-night stand. Yosoye sees the baby as a stay against the loneliness and isolation she’s felt her whole life: “The title of mother felt right. She’d spent her whole life going through fitting rooms, trying everything on, but the perfect fit was here.” But it’s also a frightening time to be pregnant: There’s been a rash of expectant mothers in Lagos dying by suicide. After Yosoye encounters the body of one on a late-night walk along a canal, she becomes obsessed with the women’s deaths. Are they linked? Could they somehow be connected to the Omi City project? And how will Yosoye keep herself safe? Pregnancy and horror have been paired since time immemorial—what more disorienting experience could there be than one human growing inside another?—but Aguda’s take here feels fresh and sharp, weaving in unexpected parallels between pregnancy and architecture and refracting it all through a prism of Nigerian history and culture.

A deft and confident first novel; Aguda balances the darkness here with light.