With Little Rot, Akwaeke Emezi is provocative, graphic, and sometimes gets a little too close to exploitation. It contains graphic depictions of sex, including with a minor (apparently a willing prostitute, if that helps), tons of violence and a barely credible plot. I read it in less than a day, but I’ll probably forget it by the end of the weekend.

Let’s get this out of the way first: If you’re put off by graphic descriptions of sex, or the apparent rape of a minor, Little Rot isn’t the book for you. I almost put it down after that chapter, and maybe I should have. At least the book is short.

Little Rot takes place over a weekend in New Lagos, where Kalu and Aima have just broken up over Kalu’s reluctance to marry. Rather than fly to London for a break, Aima decides to spend the weekend with her friend to decompress.

Aima goes out to party and winds up sleeping with her friend. She’s recently become somewhat fervently religious, and this is a serious moral conflict.

Kalu goes to a sex party. He witnesses something awful happening and intervenes. Things unravel from there.

The book breaks up into threads – one chapter follows Aima, the next Kalu, and another chapter focuses on a pair of high-class sex workers in New Lagos for work. The threads weave and cross in unexpected (and fully expected) ways. They’re all drawn together for the climax.

Emezi is a fantastic writer, and their depiction of New Lagos is intoxicating and sinister – the city comes off as a playground for the rich and a nightmare for the poor, with nothing in between. A present-day dystopia and I’d read a thousand pages of Emezi’s writing set there.

The book is reminiscent of the Guy Ritchie/Quentin Tarantino movies of the late 1990s, or more recent things like Zola – shocking reveals at the end of each segment, surprise coincidences, and plotting more concerned with twists than credibility.

What made those films work was a sense of madcap fun, the idea that the people involved in making it were having as much fun as the audience. Emezi doesn’t bring that here. It’s grim and gratuitous sex and violence. It’s propulsive and fast-paced and could be a good basis for a film like Zola — riveting and full of momentum, but really just high-quality junk food.

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