Thread of Lies

Thread of Lies, a harrowing and powerful composition of interrelated stories is built around the homophobic murder of a lesbian couple. Their deaths serve as the background and the catalyst for the narrative, written with a grim ferocity in a minimalistic yet graphic style. The unremitting depiction of violence, its violent consequences, and rampant homophobia are brought into sharp relief through the frightening presence of the character, Tito Ogheneovo. His madness fuelled by unswerving, brim-full fury, intertwine lives in Nigeria and New Zealand. He becomes the centre of attention in the subsequent search for the truth behind the murder. Thread of Lies, a significant part of the writer’s 2013 Master’s thesis, has been praised by lecturers at the Auckland University of Technology for having both the features of a novel and a collection of discrete stories because of the centrality of the character Tito and his growing violence. The events in the collection, dealing with causes and consequences, are in hectic orbit around the central, centrifugal act of violence in a manner best achieved by the composite novel approach.