‘Black Sunday’ Will Destroy You — Let It

Tola Rotimi Abraham’s Black Sunday will destroy you. It won’t be an explosion or any other ultraviolent thing. Instead, the novel will inflict a thousand tiny cuts on you, and your soul will slowly pour from them. Well, at least I think that’s what Abraham wants to do. I’m sure that’s the reason this gem of a novel is packed with so much poetry, pain, abandonment, abuse, heartbreak, and poverty. Black Sunday follows twin sisters Bibike and Ariyike and their younger brothers, Peter and Andrew, who live with their parents in Lagos. They’re not rich, but they live a calm, happy life. That changes when their mother loses her job for political reasons. Their father fails at everything he attempts and their mother is forced to take a job as a teacher. When she loses that second job, the family becomes desperate and joins a church in hopes of finding help. Instead of help, their father loans all their money to a man who disappears with it — and the family crumbles. First, their mother