Lemon Grass

"Let us start from the beginning of this story when God created the heaven and the earth. Shapeless earth; nothing was real. It looked deep, like a well without water. Everything seemed ordinary. Its extraordinariness was brought about by the omnipotence of God. God solidified everything."

So, begin the opening lines of Onyeka Nwelue's Lemon Grass, where a young patient at the Neuro-Psychiatry Hospital in Yaba, Lagos, tells other patients his story, of how he had travelled from the Biblical Sodom to Lagos.

It is a retelling of the Biblical creation story. But the story soon jumps, to the occasion of Lot, his wife and his daughters. Only that the narrator's story is an escapee of the inferno. 

He is in the police cell when he is rescued by a Catholic priest, Father Ajayi, who takes him to Rome. In Rome, the narrator goes to confession and narrates what life is like living with Father Ajayi. He confesses to witnessing paedophilia and suffering a whole range of sexual abuse under father Ajayi and his mistress, the Irish nun named Sister Mary. 

Set inside the ward at Neuro-Psychiatric Hospital in Yaba, situated in Lagos, a young nameless narrator unravels a chilling tale of beauty, sexuality, abuse and mystery.