Nearly All the Men in Lagos are Mad is a short, bingeable short story collection with really a fantastic title! Damilare Kuku centers her stories, as you expect from the title, on mad, mostly misbehaving men from Lagos. Most of the stories are written from a woman's point of view. Some of the women feel empowered, some disappointed. Because all of the stories really revolve around relationships, they feel quite consistent across themes, which is good and bad. I tend to find short stories hit or miss, but this was good, but I also did not resonate with one or two in particular. There's a lot of cheating, dating, and disappointment in these tales. Also, there is a lot of relatively explicit sex in many of the stories (take that however you like). Because this is such a short collection, it was a pleasant departure from some of my other reads and would recommend to others to read this amuse-bouche of a collection.

Thank you to HarperVia for the advance reader copy in exchange for honest review.

I usually don't go for short stories, but the title intrigued me.
From the very first line of the first story to the last, I thoroughly enjoyed these stories.
Each story was a quick read from beginning to end and kept me entertained through the entire book.

Highly recommend

Thank you to NetGalley for the Arc. All opinions are my own.

A collection of short stories about dating and marriage in Lagos. These stories were no-holds-barred. If these stories are even half true, I give tons of props to Nigerian women for navigating relationships!

I love a short story collection with a nice cohesive theme and this delivered. Each story details the woes of woman in Nigeria and their problematic romantic lives. Some of the women are young or naïve, others are well versed in the way their troublesome men work and have found ways to live and thrive anyway. It truly shows you that woman have some of the same problems the world over. I liked the peek into Nigerian life as well. Each story was a quick read, and I also like that each each one really seemed to have a nice beginning and end. Sometimes short stories feel like you're dipping into someone else's world and and you're left unresolved at the end. Each of these had a conclusion and didn't leave you hanging which I liked. I highly recommend this for anyone interested in stories from Africa, messy love lives, short story collections and women's fiction.

Why are all men maddddd?!?! The women in these stories had me hooked with their tenacity and strength! I love novellas because so much is backed into each story and there did not let me down!

This collection of short stories packs quite a punch.

The realism and willingness to address real life issues makes the stories poignant for any reader.

3.5. I would have enjoyed this more with an advanced warning of how graphic some sexual parts are -- both consensual and non. The stories were often times funny and I think they were all a really good length (not too long, about 10pgs). They read like open letters to the mad men in the story. It would serve itself well to an audiobook.

I knew this collection was going to be a wild ride from the first story! This book is certainly a page turner and if we learn anything about men from it is that they have the AUDACITY!

There are so many outlandish behaviors exhibited by men in these stories but honestly none of them shocked me. As. Heterosexual woman myself, I have experienced… men 😭

Overall, this book was a lot of fun to read and reminds us to make sure we have our stuff together, no matter how cushy life may seem. I think the only thing I didn’t particularly like was that a lot of the stories were written in second person. It was effective for some but it got to be hard to distinguish the stories after a while. But that also could have been intentional because all these different women dealing with men got burned by them in one way or another making it a universal experience and… well. I’ll leave it there 😘

"Nearly All the Men in Lagos Are Mad" by Damilare Kuku is a collection of twelve short stories depicting the misfortunes of love in Nigeria. The stories are all well-written and offer diverse reading. I thoroughly enjoyed reading about a culture I previously had little experience with and KuKu did a fantastic job at explaining things without it seeming like an explanation.
The majority of the stories are in a female's point of view (second person narration), but there are several in a male's; I found this to be jarring when I got to the first one. I actually enjoyed one of the male pov stories the most, but I wish the choice had been made to have them all be female povs. While I had no issue with the sensitive nature of some of the stories, I will warn that some of the stories could be triggering. I think my biggest issue with this was the ordering of the stories and the male povs. I almost wish those had been kept for a different collection.
I ended up finishing this collection in one day and decided to give it a three star. I would definitely read from this author again.

Thank you to NetGalley and HarperVia for the advanced readers copy (ebook).

This is an entertaining story collection about the trials and tribulations of women trying to find the right men in Nigeria. Clever writing and funny moments; however, after a while the stories became a bit repetitive. Looking forward to reading more by the author. Thanks to NetGalley for a chance to read and review this book!

3.5 stars. I love a good short story collection but this one will make you laugh and you'll probably never book a trip to Nigeria! Well-written and humorous, a lot of these Lagos women are giving back as good as they get. And you really will wonder if half the country is full of men who can't seem to act right. Thank God there are women to call them on it.

*Special thanks to NetGalley and HarperVia for this e-arc.*

This was such a good book. I really need to read more authors from Africa. and I was not disappointed with this one. Def 5 STAR READ FOR ME.

I was drawn to this book by the title and the description of dating disasters! Like many short story collections, this one had its ups and downs. Some stories I loved, some not so much. Some made me laugh and many others left me feeling quite sad and hollow. I think I went in with expectations of these being kind of Sex and the City dating stories, but because the author does such a great job giving the characters real emotions and inner lives, it made it hard for me to see the humor and I instead got caught up in the other emotions. As a full collection, it didn't quite strike the right balance for me, but I enjoyed seeing these different slices of life in Lagos and I would recommend reading as standalone stories with breaks in between.

In the short story collection Nearly All The Men In Lagos Are Mad BY Damilare Kuku we get stories from many few points in Nigerian society from a famous rapper who gets catfished in a strange way in the story, Catfish. We also learned about a wife who threatens to cut off her husband‘s member and so he makes it a family affair in the story Cuck Up. There’s many. Great stories in this anthology but I must admit I usually write my favorite and I was going to put The Beard Gang , which is about a group of wives married to not so normal men or are they? This was a great story I loved it and I thought it was going to be my favorite but then I read Independence Day but when going back to see the name of this story I also remember the story Sidelined and THE First Time so essentially what I will say is every story is worth buying this book for and although some can be quite graphic and detailed when it comes to sex scenes for the most part it is apropos to the story and isn’t told for gratuitous reasons. Having said that I truly enjoyed this book it’s about a dozen stories and they were all really really good. This was a book I couldn’t wait to read and I was not disappointed after reading it. I want to thank Harper via and Net galley for my free Ark copy please forgive any mistakes as I am blind and dictate my review.

Okay, these stories were freakin hilarious. These confident and absolutely bingeworthy stories written by Nollywood actress Damilare Kuku will satisfy all those who crave top-tier brunch gossip with the unhinged girlies. The characters in these stories are seriously unhinged, raw, and immaculate in their sense of self-preservation, their committment to their values, in their ability to navigate life’s chaos (and an obstacle course of men) in Lagos, Nigeria.

In these pages you’ll meet a pastor’s wife dealing with a scandal, a woman who enrages her husband’s family after holding a knife to his nether regions (ha!), women falling in and out of love, men with lifelong brotherhood-esque friendships, men from Lagos, men from abroad, women in various stages of life trying to make sense of it all.

This story collection is so multi-faceted. Hilarious with heavy doses of spicy (yes, warning about the spicy haha. It is pressnt in almost every story and Kuku isn’t shy about providing the details). There are also plenty of moments that are incredibly heartrenching and provocative and inspiring. The women in these pages are so dear to me! (And some of the men, too haha).

This would make an amazing book-club-with-the-girlies-and-some-wine book club pick. Gosh, if there are any book club events featuring this book right now, I wish I could teleport and eavesdrop into the chatter. Drama abound in these pages! The circumstances characters find themselves in are so unique, and the way characters respond to their predicaments kept me guessing and on my toes. Many of their choices were sooooo freakin authentic and satisfying too. And for a book that is this hilarious, I wasn’t expecting the last story to make me tear up or to give me chills, but that’s exactly what happened.

Also, on a different note…I love witnessing casual departures from the Anglo-linguistic peppered throughout the text. The pidgin and the Yoruba and the cultural references…all of these added such authenticity, such transportivity, such cadence, I could feel the characters’ presence in my eardrums. It was lovely and I hope to see more and more of this in literature that is brought to the US, there was a certain note here or there, I’d realize…this wasn’t originally written for Americans to approve of. It is refreshing to read something originally created for Nigerian audiences. And I hear it is wildly popular there, that the author is a famous actress there. It is refreshing to have this integrity of text withstand the transition to an American audience: me, sitting in my Colombian-American body relishing the unexplained, figure-it-out-from-context or do-your-research or simply-let-it-flow-over-your-synapses lingo that shows up every so often. Nigeria is so far from home for me…yet reading this made me feel cosy inside. Not to mention that I literally crave African literature so much since leaving the continent a few years ago. I was only there for 10 months, but my time there made such an impression on me. Thank you, Kuku, for transporting me! (I def need to plan a trip to Nigeria haha).

Also, thank you to Netgalley and the publisher! This is my honest review.

The voices in these stories are varied and wise, each in their own way. And male and female alike prove the title! Be prepared to confront your own humility and emotions through the fictional situations.

Such a great read! Nearly All the Men in Lagos Are Mad is so smart and sharp, and I love when Kuku uses the second person, drawing us as the readers in and making those stories feel that much more personal. We explore men who are bad and don’t know it, men who are bad and do, good men, women hating each other, women helping each other. Every story features a different combination and a different set of challenges, but what links them all together is a sort of matter-of-fact tone that grounds you. As advertised, this is a work full of anti-romcoms--it really doesn't disappoint, and I especially love how she grants us a very vindictive and fulfilling ending with the very last story.

I've seen some reviews talking about the sensationalist aspect of the book, which I agree with. There is probably a sex scene in almost every story, and I do agree that some of them can feel unnecessary at times. They can be truly effective when it matters, though, and for that, I'm bumping up my 4.5 to a 5. All the same, the book would greatly benefit from some sort of preliminary warning to the reader. I've also seen a few reviews about the "misandric" quality of the book, which I don't believe is really there. While I don't think I'm fit to talk about the story's setting of Lagos and how it relates to the overall dynamic of man and woman in this specific context, it's safe to say that there are plenty of good men who shine in this work, and there's no need to focus on the mad men and say that's all there is. All in all, this was an insightful, fast-paced work that I enjoyed!

Nearly All the Men in Lagos Are Mad is a collection of 12 short stories, all highlighting how shitty the men of Lagos appear to be. This was described as an anti rom-com and I think that's a perfect descriptor. I found each story to be interesting and distinct enough from the others in the collection; something I often struggle with in short story collections is the stories bleeding together so major credit to the author for the creativity, originality, and uniqueness of each story. Will definitely be picking up the author's novel.

I did not like the short story aspect and would have preferred a longer more engaging story. Also - the pub date is incorrect, this book is already released.

I LOVED THIS READ!

I'm a big fan of Nigerian literature; it's so visceral and relatable to everyone across the diaspora (in my humble opinion). This book definitely did not disappoint. I considered deception a "trigger" while reading this, because some readers might be disturbed by the acts of deception in the book, as they were particularly heinous. This read truly made me gasp, shake my head and kiss my teeth. Read and see what emotions it brings up for you!