Vagabonds: Life on the Streets of Nineteenth-century London – Shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize 2023

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takes us deep inside the hearts, minds, and bodies of a people in duress—and in triumph—in a way that only the best fiction can do. Eko, the spirit of Lagos, and his loyal minion Tatafo weave trouble through the streets of Lagos and through the lives of the 'vagabonds' powering modern Nigeria: the queer, the displaced and the footloose. After God, Fear Women” shows how domestic violence becomes normalized for men and offers a kind of hope in the form of a power that carries women up into the sky. Writing with an elegance and emotional intelligence that exceeds many novels, he presents us with the lives of beggars (children and adults), match sellers, buskers, milkmaids, pickpockets, prostitutes and the odd famous actor. Sickly fifteen-year-old Prince Psal, the son of warrior-king Nahas, should have been named Crown Prince of all Wheel Clan lands.

Vagabonds" by Eloghosa Osunde is a complex novel that explores Nigerian spirituality, queer representation, and the lives of those who are often marginalized in society. Not only a notable accumulation, from original sources, of the horrors of survival on the streets of nineteenth-century London, but a devastating exposure of pseudo-charity as a form of coercive policing. Jensen’s fascinating, delightfully readable book is animated by a formidable passion for recovering the stories of some of metropolitan London’s poorest, most precarious, but also most creative people, a passion that is all too rare in accounts of the period.This is a truly stunning book; it's brave by every measure of the word, formally challenging, radical in subject matter, bold in narrative voice. This includes her historic Calendar Year Triple Crown hike in 2018 when she hiked all three of those trails in one March-November season, making her the first female to do so. Jensen does an excellent job of weaving the various stories together and providing context, although the highlights are undoubtedly the passages in which we are able to read the words of the subjects themselves. Wisely, Jensen has included many direct quotes, which speak powerfully of the experiences of those who lived on the poverty line.

was a finalist for the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize and longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize.In “Johnny Just Come,” Aniekan changes his name to Johnny and moves from a small town to Lagos to drive for a trafficker in human organs. All of the stories are set in a Nigeria where magic and violence are as common as air and sunlight and outsiders can see the world more clearly than anyone else. The gods were very sure of what they were looking for whenever they sent Eziza, the rainmaker told Anjos, but in the process of trying to find those things and those people, they didn't hesitate to clear anything or anyone that stood in their way. Some of those we meet as children are reintroduced in later chapters, giving a touching sense of seeing lives unfold.

When Eziza came, the man explained, it arrived in full force, seizing whole human beings in its body. Jensen doesn't just present these hitherto marginalised figures on the page; like a delightful sorcerer, he brings them back to life. The rest claim that the match was only confusing because the ball kept on doubling, or tripling, and Nigeria's goalkeeper found it impossible to know which one to focus on. Jensen's collection of stories of life on the streets and the margins on 18th and 19th Century London does not add up to any grand narrative of the development of London, or British society. Until now, our view of bustling late Georgian and Victorian London has been filtered through its great chroniclers, who did not themselves come from poverty – Dickens, Mayhew, Gustave Dore.But it deals with serious subjects – violence against women, rich vs poor, and the persecution of queer people since the Same Sex Marriage (Prohibition) Bill was passed in Nigeria in 2014. Johnny’s job is to drive and be silent, and he does both so well he loses his voice, his conscience, and his mind just as he discovers his love for a man named Livinus.