The first death in The Death of Vivek Oji is a metaphorical one, so subtle that it is barely noticed if you aren’t attuned to the vivid world that Emezi builds. Life presents Kavita, an Indian orphan, with an opportunity to remake herself in a new country, to leave behind the stigma of caste and begin her life anew as a cherished wife and daughter-in-law. Kavita fashions herself into the model Igbo wife under the tutelage of the Nigerwives, an oft-overlooked subculture populated by women who forsake their heritage, cultures and countries for love or by circumstance and assimilate into Nigeria. Kavita also inherits in-laws: Ekene, the patriarch of their compact extended family, and Mary, the senior wife.

Being the model Igbo wife is an identity Kavita doesn’t fully reckon with until her son Vivek is born on the day that his beloved grandmother, Ahunna, dies. It is implied that Ahunna believed in the old ways, and her death is a herald for Vivek’s birth. But Chika, Kavita’s husband, refuses to engage with what it would mean for his mother to reincarnate as his son. He is superstitious, and Vivek’s birth has already brought grief into his and Kavita’s lives. Kavita and Mary both end up with one child for different reasons. Mary cannot conceive despite her desire for more children, and Kavita abstains due to the trauma of losing Ahunna on the day of Vivek’s birth. With a year’s difference between them, Vivek and Osita, his cousin, are raised as siblings, orbiting between Ngwa and Owerri.

But Vivek is not like other children. Chika, his father, knows this because he compares him to Osita. Vivek is sensitive, in contrast to Osita’s stoicism; fragile, where Osita is hardy. Chika wants his only son to grow into a capable man, so he sends Vivek to military school to toughen him up despite Kavita’s pleas. This decision drives the first wedge between Vivek and his parents. Chika thinks Osita is a good influence on Vivek, but he doesn’t know that their kinship is not merely platonic. Osita desires Vivek even before he has the language to name these desires, and to him, they are in ways that are abominable, ways he cannot reconcile with. He suppresses his desires and tries, instead, to co-opt Vivek into a performance of heteronormative masculinity. When it backfires because of Vivek’s now debilitating fugues, Osita lashes out, cutting ties with his cousin and abandoning him in Ngwa to run back to the relative safety of Owerri. This forced estrangement from his ‘Irish twin’ fractures Vivek’s mind.

Vivek forgoes his plans of moving abroad to study. Eventually, even university life in Nigeria becomes untenable. He withdraws, returning home to his parents in Ngwa where he withers and they agonize over his situation. Kavita pours herself into finding solutions for Vivek while Chika distracts himself with infidelity. She turns to Mary, who subjects Vivek to a violent exorcism, further worsening the relationship between him and his family. When Ekene is brought in to intervene, he sides with his wife and is disowned by his brother.

When Osita eventually overcomes his shame and seeks out Vivek three years later, it is for somewhat selfish reasons. He is amazed to find that Vivek is undergoing a transfiguration, nurtured by children of the Nigerwives, girls who know what it feels like to be of two worlds but belong to neither. Somto and Olunne are the first to recognize that Vivek needs protection, not an intervention. They gather a posse around him: Juju and Elizabeth, who are exploring a lesbian relationship under their mothers’ noses, and Osita, who is reluctant at first but eventually becomes committed to Vivek. His chosen family hides him away in their bedrooms as he transforms outside of parental expectations and societal conventions. He becomes Nnemdi, who loves dresses, makeup and Osita, and wants to move through the world acknowledged as their fullest, most actualized self. Osita permits himself to love Nnemdi, but fears for their safety. It is that fear that leads to Vivek’s accidental death.

Kavita undergoes a second death when Vivek passes. She finds them, their naked body swaddled in an Akwete sheet on their veranda after a religious riot in Ngwa market. Overcome with grief and determined to fill the gaps between Vivek’s life and death, Kavita barrels through their small town, questing for answers. It is in her quest that she rescues Osita from the mouth of ruin in Owerri and, after months of false starts, meets Vivek truly for the first time, not as the son she wanted, but as the child she failed. She gets to honour her child as they wanted to be loved, to accept in death what was inconceivable in life.

Throughout the novel, Vivek speaks from beyond the veil. Death doesn’t wait at the end of Vivek’s life to greet them; it imbues their birth with meaning and follows them home. After a lifetime of dysphoria, Vivek’s death, where they present as their truest self, in the arms of their forbidden lover is salvation. Vivek tells us that death is no longer a thing to fear, but a companion to embrace. They welcome death at every turn, shedding the parts that no longer serve their true self. Death is an allegory, not one of finality but of rebirth, reincarnation and reinvention.