
Vagabonds!
A Novel
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By:
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Eloghosa Osunde
About this listen
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORKER
LONGLISTED FOR THE CENTER FOR FICTION FIRST NOVEL PRIZE AND THE VCU CABELL FIRST NOVELIST AWARD
“If you read one debut novel in 2022, this should be it.” —Los Angeles Times
In the bustling streets and cloistered homes of Lagos, a cast of vivid characters—some haunted, some defiant—navigate danger, demons, and love in a quest to lead true lives.
As in Nigeria, vagabonds are those whose existence is literally outlawed: the queer, the poor, the displaced, the footloose and rogue spirits. They are those who inhabit transient spaces, who make their paths and move invisibly, who embrace apparitions, old vengeances and alternative realities. Eloghosa Osunde's brave, fiercely inventive novel traces a wild array of characters for whom life itself is a form of resistance: a driver for a debauched politician with the power to command life and death; a legendary fashion designer who gives birth to a grown daughter; a lesbian couple whose tender relationship sheds unexpected light on their experience with underground sex work; a wife and mother who attends a secret spiritual gathering that shifts her world. As their lives intertwine—in bustling markets and underground clubs, churches and hotel rooms—vagabonds are seized and challenged by spirits who command the city's dark energy. Whether running from danger, meeting with secret lovers, finding their identities, or vanquishing their shadowselves, Osunde's characters confront and support one another, before converging for the once-in-a-lifetime gathering that gives the book its unexpectedly joyous conclusion.
Blending unvarnished realism with myth and fantasy, Vagabonds! is a vital work of imagination that takes us deep inside the hearts, minds, and bodies of a people in duress—and in triumph.
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Critic reviews
“In a world that seeks to consign to the shadows those who don’t conform, Osunde’s vagabonds act as an illuminating force for one another.” —The New Yorker
“Ghosts and dueling deities occupy Ms. Osunde’s wild, phantasmagorical portrait of a city. . . . A note of empowerment appears, turning [Vagabonds!] into a kind of rallying cry. It is in the hidden margins of a corrupt metropolis, the stories affirm, that truth and bravery are to be found.” —Wall Street Journal
“Lagos has featured in any number of novels by Nigerian writers . . . but usually the gaze is relentlessly male. . . . Vagabonds! is different: it tells compelling stories of survival, about women seizing agency in spite of the forces ranged against them.” —Adewale Maja-Pearce, London Review of Books
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Engaging story, very well told
- By Moth77 on 05-10-25
By: Sarah Cypher
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The Gardins of Edin
- A Novel
- By: Rosey Lee
- Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
- Length: 10 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Though regarded as a close-knit family and pillars of the community of Edin, Georgia, the four women of the Gardin family privately know their relationships are rapidly fraying. They struggle to hold the family and its multimillion-dollar peanut business together, as a looming crisis threatens the legacy of their formerly enslaved ancestors.
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Wonderful read
- By kindlecustomer on 01-16-25
By: Rosey Lee
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My Beloved Life
- A Novel
- By: Amitava Kumar
- Narrated by: Amitava Kumar
- Length: 13 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Jadunath Kunwar’s beginnings are humble, even inauspicious. In 1935 in a village near George Orwell’s birthplace, Jadu’s mother, while pregnant with him, nearly dies from a cobra bite. When we see Jadu again, he is in college, meeting the Sherpa who first summited Everest and wondering what it means to be modern. As his life skates between the mythical and the mundane, and as changes big and small sweep across India, Jadu finds meaning in the most unexpected places.
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Profoundly moving
- By Kani on 12-22-24
By: Amitava Kumar
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And Then She Fell
- A Novel
- By: Alicia Elliott
- Narrated by: Cheri Maracle, Jenna Clause
- Length: 10 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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On the surface, Alice is exactly where she thinks she should be: She’s just given birth to a beautiful baby girl, Dawn; her charming husband, Steve—a white academic whose area of study is conveniently her own Mohawk culture—is nothing but supportive; and they’ve moved into a new home in a posh Toronto neighborhood. But Alice could not feel like more of an impostor. She isn’t connecting with her daughter, a struggle made even more difficult by the recent loss of her own mother, and every waking moment is spent hiding her despair from Steve and their ever-watchful neighbors.
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hau day own day!
- By Karli on 11-06-23
By: Alicia Elliott
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The History of a Difficult Child
- A Novel
- By: Mihret Sibhat
- Narrated by: Waceke Wambaa
- Length: 13 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Wisecracking, inquisitive, and bombastic, Selam Asmelash is the youngest child in her large, boisterous family. Even before she is born, she has a wry, bewitching omniscience that animates life in her Small Town in southwestern Ethiopia in the 1980s. Selam and her father listen to the radio in secret as the socialist military junta that recently overthrew the government seizes properties and wages civil war in the North. The Asmelashes, once an enterprising, land-owning family, are ostracized under the new regime.
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Intriguingly Unusual
- By Mule Maven on 10-07-23
By: Mihret Sibhat
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The Unsettled
- A Novel
- By: Ayana Mathis
- Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
- Length: 11 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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From the moment Ava Carson and her ten-year-old son, Toussaint, arrive at the Glenn Avenue family shelter in Philadelphia 1985, Ava is already plotting a way out. She is repulsed by the shelter's squalid conditions: their cockroach-infested room, the barely edible food, and the shifty night security guard. She is determined to rescue her son from the perils and indignities of that place, and to save herself from the complicated past that led them there.
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Well that was depressing
- By Holly on 12-05-23
By: Ayana Mathis
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Old Enough
- A Novel
- By: Haley Jakobson
- Narrated by: Jenna Kray, Haley Jakobson
- Length: 9 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Savannah "Sav" Henry is almost the person she wants to be, or at least she's getting closer. It’s the second semester of her sophomore year. She’s finally come out as bisexual, is making friends with the other queers in her dorm, and has just about recovered from her disastrous first queer “situationship.” She is cautiously optimistic that her life is about to begin.
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Loved!!
- By Louise Judd on 07-20-23
By: Haley Jakobson
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My Name Is Venus Black
- A Novel
- By: Heather Lloyd
- Narrated by: Alex McKenna, Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 11 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Venus Black is a straitlaced A student fascinated by the study of astronomy - until the night she commits a shocking crime that tears her family apart and ignites a media firestorm. Venus refuses to talk about what happened or why, except to blame her mother. Adding to the mystery, Venus’ developmentally challenged younger brother, Leo, goes missing. More than five years later, Venus is released from prison with a suitcase of used clothes, a fake identity, and a determination to escape her painful past.
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Loved it!
- By Yikes on 03-24-18
By: Heather Lloyd
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The Road to the Country
- A Novel
- By: Chigozie Obioma
- Narrated by: Junior Nyong'o
- Length: 13 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Set in Nigeria in the late 1960s, The Road to the Country is the epic story of a shy, bookish student haunted by long-held guilt who must go to war to free himself. When his younger brother disappears as the country explodes in civil war, Kunle must set out on an impossible rescue mission. Kunle’s search for his brother becomes a journey of atonement that will see him conscripted into the breakaway Biafran army and forced to fight a war he hardly understands, all while navigating the prophecies of a local Seer, he who marks Kunle as an abami eda—one who will die and return to life.
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Romance in war
- By Anthony Nana Kwamu on 03-15-25
By: Chigozie Obioma
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The Vanished Birds
- A Novel
- By: Simon Jimenez
- Narrated by: Shayna Small
- Length: 13 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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A ship captain, unfettered from time. A mute child, burdened with unimaginable power. A millennia-old woman, haunted by lifetimes of mistakes. In this captivating debut of connection across space and time, these outsiders will find in each other the things they lack: a place of love and belonging. A safe haven. A new beginning. But the past hungers for them, and when it catches up, it threatens to tear this makeshift family apart.
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Character driven, tech minimum space opera
- By David on 02-08-20
By: Simon Jimenez
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Caucasia
- A Novel
- By: Danzy Senna
- Narrated by: January LaVoy
- Length: 14 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Birdie and Cole are the daughters of a black father and a white mother, intellectuals and activists in the Civil Rights Movement in 1970s Boston. The sisters are so close that they speak their own language, yet Birdie, with her light skin and straight hair, is often mistaken for white, while Cole is dark enough to fit in with the other kids at school. Despite their differences, Cole is Birdie's confidant, her protector, the mirror by which she understands herself. Then their parents' marriage collapses.
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Fabulous all around! ❤️
- By R. Ramanujam on 12-25-24
By: Danzy Senna
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The Antidote for Everything
- By: Kimmery Martin
- Narrated by: Dorothy Dillingham Blue
- Length: 12 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Georgia Brown’s profession as a urologist requires her to interact with plenty of naked men, but her romantic prospects have fizzled. The most important person in her life is her friend Jonah Tsukada, a funny, empathetic family medicine doctor who works at the same hospital in Charleston, South Carolina and who has become as close as family to her. Just after Georgia leaves the country for a medical conference, Jonah shares startling news. The hospital is instructing doctors to stop providing medical care for transgender patients.
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50/50
- By RueRue on 03-13-20
By: Kimmery Martin
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The Devourers
- A Novel
- By: Indra Das
- Narrated by: Shishir Kurup, Meera Simhan
- Length: 13 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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On a cool evening in Kolkata, India, beneath a full moon, as the whirling rhythms of traveling musicians fill the night, college professor Alok encounters a mysterious stranger with a bizarre confession and an extraordinary story. Tantalized by the man's unfinished tale, Alok will do anything to hear its completion. So Alok agrees, at the stranger's behest, to transcribe a collection of battered notebooks, weathered parchments, and once-living skins.
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Myth brought to life of piss and carnage
- By Sarah on 09-19-16
By: Indra Das
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Songs for the Brokenhearted
- A Novel
- By: Ayelet Tsabari
- Narrated by: Ayelet Tsabari, Assaf Cohen, Yossi Zabari
- Length: 13 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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1950. Thousands of Yemeni Jews have immigrated to the newly founded Israel in search of a better life. In an overcrowded immigrant camp in Rosh Ha’ayin, Yaqub, a shy young man, happens upon Saida, a beautiful girl singing by the river. In the midst of chaos and uncertainty, they fall in love. But they weren’t supposed to; Saida is married and has a child, and a married woman has no place befriending another man.
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heartfelt story about love and loss
- By S. Price on 12-15-24
By: Ayelet Tsabari
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Things We Lost to the Water
- A Novel
- By: Eric Nguyen
- Narrated by: Quyen Ngo
- Length: 10 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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When Huong arrives in New Orleans with her two young sons, she is jobless, homeless, and worried about her husband, Cong, who remains in Vietnam. As she and her boys begin to settle in to life in America, she continues to send letters and tapes back to Cong, hopeful that they will be reunited and her children will grow up with a father. But with time, Huong realizes she will never see her husband again. While she attempts to come to terms with this loss, her sons grow up in their absent father's shadow, haunted by a man and a country trapped in their memories and imaginations.
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Vietnamese immigrant experience
- By Susan on 08-30-21
By: Eric Nguyen
If it's your first time listening to a book like this where there are several different stories happening at once it may be a bit confusing but stick it out!!! It all comes together beautifully at the end. 😊
Loved it!!!
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Magic
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Loved it!
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Perfection!
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Powerful and Visionary
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- you don’t need anything but an open heart to read this book. Put aside your god, your politics, your walls. You don’t need them here
- know that this book comes judgment free.
V! in a consistent tone shows you stories and yourself so when you see your shame in that, remember to interrogate yourself and ask it where it came from.
This book can be give everything you need if you let it. For me, it gave me courage to do the bravest thing I have ever done.
Through this book, at the end, in the middle, is freedom.
V! is an open door, will you walk through it?
V! is an open door, will you walk through it?
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The story was great, joined together at the seams and woven with really delicate threads that hold it firm.
The performance and narration were exceptional, putting an aliveness to the work.
I loved it all!
Vagabonds! is soul finding!
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One of the best books of 2022
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Bravo
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Terrible
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