Madhouse

The dazzling story of a Nigerian family. The house at the end of Freetown Street in Nigeria’s Sabon Gari was once a sanatorium for colonists deranged from the heat and insanity of the place. Now it is home to a family whose unorthodox lives unfold into legend: Sweet Mother, an artist, her husband Shariff, a writer and soldier, and their children André and Max.From the moment his baby brother André is born, Max attaches himself to him, even dreaming the boy’s homicidal dreams. When the wayward André later pulls free from the family to join a death cult, Max must decide how far he will be drawn into his brother’s web.Serene and beautiful, Ladidi joins the family as a foster child, promising to marry the boy at school who can bring her a strawberry, a fruit she has never tasted.Sensuality blooms, along with loss of innocence amid the death of music legend Fela Kuti, massacres, disappearances, abductions and broken promises.While Sweet Mother and Shariff battle their personal demons, Max realises you cannot save your family. But can you ever escape them? In his exhilarating debut, TJ Benson conjures up a kaleidoscope of Nigeria. This is the extraordinary tale of five people bound by blood, each searching for a way through.

TJ Benson is a writer and visual artist who explores the body in the context of memory, migration, utopia and the unconscious self. His work has been exhibited and published in several journals and shortlisted for awards, winning the Amab-hbf prize and being placed as first runner-up for the Short Story Day Africa prize. His well-received short story collection We Won’t Fade into Darkness was published in 2018. He currently lives in an apartment full of plants in Kaduna, Nigeria, and is on the verge of becoming a cat person.