Speak No Evil

A Nigerian American high school student and his straight, white girl friend grapple with the consequences of his coming out in this powerful novel.

“A lovely slender volume that packs in entire worlds with complete mastery. Speak No Evil explains so much about our times and yet is never anything less than a scintillating, page-turning read.” —Gary Shteyngart, author of Little Failure

Winner of the Gold Nautilus Award for Fiction

A Lambda Literary Award Finalist

A Barbara Gittings Literature Award Finalist

One of Bustle’s and Paste’s Most Anticipated Fiction Books of the Year 

On the surface, Niru leads a charmed life. Raised by two attentive parents in Washington, D.C., he’s a top student and a track star at his prestigious private high school. Bound for Harvard in the fall, his prospects are bright. But Niru has a painful secret: he is queer—an abominable sin to his conservative Nigerian parents. No one knows except Meredith, his best friend, the daughter of prominent Washington insiders—and the one person who seems not to judge him.

When his father accidentally discovers Niru is gay, the fallout is brutal and swift. Coping with troubles of her own, however, Meredith finds that she has little left emotionally to offer him. As the two friends struggle to reconcile their desires against the expectations and institutions that seek to define them, they find themselves speeding toward a future more violent and senseless than they can imagine. Neither will escape unscathed.

“Iweala is a unique and surprising writer. . . . He has a rare gift for capturing stream-of-consciousness thought, tackling it at a pace that’s quick but authentic.” —Entertainment Weekly

“An evocative narrative and stark dialogue keeps . . . Speak No Evil from a single dull moment. . . . [Iweala’s] characters’ rawness and beauty overwhelm page by page, looping their two stories into one heartbreaking narrative, one that embodies and echoes the pains of current, broader inequalities.” —AV Club

“A wrenching, tightly woven story about many kinds of love and many kinds of violence. Speak No Evil probes deeply but also with compassion the cruelties of a loving home. Iweala’s characters confront you in close-up, as viscerally, bodily alive as any in contemporary fiction.” —Larissa MacFarquhar