Nearly All the Men in Lagos Are Mad

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Short stories are always a good start to get off a reading slump or ease you out of the state that heavy books leave you in. While Lagos, Yoruba, and indeed,Nigerian men have their peculiarities, many of which are far from gentlemanly or chivalrous, the sustenance of moral decadence in a generation that sees sex as a commodity, is bound to result in unfortunate eventualities, of which women tend to bear most of the brunt. Her debut collection of stories, Nearly All the Men in Lagos Are Mad, became a runaway bestseller in Africa upon its release in 2021, and was named the bestselling fiction title of 2022 in Nigeria, with international editions following in the UK (Swift Press), US (HarperVia) and Germany (Peter Hammer Verlag). Again like all the books I read by Nigerian female authors, the book has a nice warm Nollywood feel. This part of it, including the extensive use of complex and hard-to-read sentences, would have benefited from good editing.

A player boy who gets tricked by an Instagram influencer but happens to find love in the most unexpected way and person. That should not have been comfortable for her and anyone in her shoes would have done the right thing by reporting it to the school authorities. This to me is madness, that this man seems to get the victim position when they both are secretive and toxic to each other. As a result, the very proponents of this culture, the new generation, are trapped in a cycle of hurt, uncontrolled lust and distended emotional capability. So, if anyone can collate stories about the madness of the men, there deserves to be one revealing the madness of the women.The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. The stereotype of pointing fingers at the woman as being responsible for infertility in marriages finds its way into this novel as well.

Noting that the cause of infertility in the marriage is a result of the woman’s irresponsible lifestyle in her youth, the author then reveals that the man has tried his best not to cheat on her when he already brought in an official third party into the marriage. There's a story of a young lady who tries to find her oyibo soulmate on the streets of Lagos; another of a pastor's wife who defends her husband from an allegation of adultery; a wife takes a knife to her husband's penis; a night of lust between a rising musician and his Instagram baddie takes an unexpected turn. The humor in the novel cannot be missed, in ‘That Weekend in August’, the author helps us to relive the 6 am warm water and salt bath broadcast that went around after the Ebola virus outbreak.

Starr”, the author makes it known that the woman contributes nothing to the home as she follows her husband on all his tours and shows to ensure he doesn’t have baby mamas. Lagos of the Mad: Review of Damilare Kuku's Nearly all the Men in Lagos are Mad | Melony Akpoghene". Before picking up this book, I'd already known that Lagos men are really not okay in the head 😂 These stories (fictional, yes yes, I know) just confirm that.

The forever downtrodden and humiliated wives/girlfriends take their revenge and we hear about all kinds of horrible things the men do. Almost two years later, Ugochukwu Ugonna’s ‘Who Drove Nearly All the Men in Lagos Mad’ hits the market.It sometimes made the transition from the end of one story to the beginning of another a bit jarring for me. I also thought it could have benefited from a further edit, and from more variety in the narrative styles/ voices. Although set in various parts of Lagos, the part about it being 'men' isn't quite true as the book shows.

I wished some of the stories had more depth to them but overall I would recommend this to anyone who is in a reading rut and looking for a good laugh! Femi is not the only male character who is dubious, there is the male protagonist in ‘Just the Tip’ who cheats on his partner with her best friend just because she wouldn’t have sex with him outside the confines of marriage. The book shows us the type of men Lagos women encounter in the dating scene and how it usually ends. A compelling read, but it gets two stars less from me: one for the use of "Nigerian English", and a second for a thoroughly misleading book title. The collection starts strong with a witty story that adds a touch of sad shame, but that story gets the reader invested and you are already priming yourself for more.Nearly All The Men In Lagos Are Mad by Damilare Kuku is a catch of a collection of 12 versatile stories converging to draw the reader into a fictional world which reads not-so-fictitive, as the reality is nearly all Lagos men were well captured in this book. What I didn't like about the book is that because of the title and the entire premise of the short-story collection, you knew how every story was going to end with a man breaking a woman's heart. Nearly All the Men in Lagos Are Mad underscores with wit, humour, wisdom and sensitivity, the perils of trying to find lasting love and companionship in Africa's most notorious city. I liked the Lagosian vernacular in the story throughout, it felt like I was witnessing a narrative between people in real life. Anyone who could keep a white shirt clean at the end of the day in Lagos deserved a standing ovation.