Ani Kayode Somtochukwu
Ani Kayode Somtochukwu (born 1999 or 2000) is a Nigerian novelist, known for his 2023 debut novel, And Then He Sang a Lullaby, which won the Edmund White Award in 2024.
Quotes
- I like to think of my writing as an expression of love for the African people, a commitment to our capacity for justice and liberty, an insistence on dreaming our freedom as an inevitable eventuality. I want to be an incendiary bomb. And I know that stories have that power.
- [1] Discussing the purpose of his writing. Writers Have the Obligation of Imagining the Future That Must Be Achieved, The Republic, 11 May 2025.
- I wrote And Then He Sang a Lullaby while doing an internship. I was working for a hospital in Port Harcourt as a laboratory assistant.
- [2] Explaining the circumstances in which he wrote his debut novel. Writers Have the Obligation of Imagining the Future That Must Be Achieved, The Republic, 11 May 2025.
- My queer activism in university came with a steeper cost than I had stopped to take account of. I was mocked openly, mobbed twice by cultists and threatened too many times to count.
- [3] Reflecting on the personal cost of his activism while at university. Writers Have the Obligation of Imagining the Future That Must Be Achieved, The Republic, 11 May 2025.
- One feedback that I enjoyed though found surprising was that And Then He Sang a Lullaby was so Nigerian. So 'unapologetically Nigerian' one reviewer put it. That is the biggest compliment I could get.
- [4] On readers' responses to his debut novel. Writers Have the Obligation of Imagining the Future That Must Be Achieved, The Republic, 11 May 2025.
- Queer liberation is the only sustainable solution.
- [5] On queer rights and activism. Queer liberation is the only sustainable solution: A conversation with Ani Kayode Somtochukwu, Shado Magazine, 12 August 2023.
- By the time I started working on And Then He Sang a Lullaby in August 2018, I had already been a queer activist for about three years and had suffered a lot of repercussions for it.
- [6] Discussing the experiences that shaped his debut novel. A Short Talk With Ani Kayode Somtochukwu, A Long House, 28 June 2025.
