The academic and fiction writer, Lola Akande, has released a new novel titled, The Truth about Sadia.

The novel explores how the use of alcohol and hard drugs can lead to the development of mental illness. It recounts the life from childhood to middle age of a beautiful, talented Nigerian woman, Sadia Onaolapo Oyelowo, who must endure tragedy to realise the person she is: strong, resourceful and, above all, a survivor.

Her husband, Mofeoluwa Ayowumi Bolarinwa, is not of sound mind and is inclined to go off the rails in fits of abnormal and strange behaviours following alcohol and drug binges, for which he is hospitalised at a psychiatric hospital.

The Truth about Sadia is a rich, multi-layered novel that does not shy away from delving into the seamier sides of modern Nigerian life in a Lagos rife with contradictions and, above all, the energy for which the city is famous. Indeed, the city is as much a presence in the novel as the characters, especially the two main characters that must reconcile their separate destinies against the city’s contradictions.

This is a novel for the time, warts and all.