Beautiful Nothing is a collection of short stories exploring the clash of faith and the blurred line between the physical and the spiritual.
A Yoruba chief dies in London and his children rebuff Ogboni confraternity’s demand that the body be repatriated to Nigeria for traditional burial rites, citing the cost. Soon, a mysterious string of deaths begins to ravage the family.
A little Christian boy mocks his grandmother and their landlady’s habit of invoking and offering food to invisible ancestors. But his certainty about the foolishness of their beliefs is shattered one evening when he encounters an apparition in the passage of their house.
Loko roams Dagbolu town shirtless, clutching a piece of charcoal and scribbling on walls. The community has stories about the beloved schoolteacher who suddenly ran mad. His handwriting remains beautiful, but no one can make sense of the compositions he leaves behind wherever he pauses in his relentless wanderings. Are the writings, which he usually dates, mere ramblings of a troubled mind or a code carrying a message?
Across its varied tales, the characters in Beautiful Nothing are confronted with experiences that unsettle their beliefs, leaving them grappling with the possibility of alternative realities beyond what the eyes can see.
