This month, we\u2019re reading about the complexities of love\u2014particularly queer love\u2014in environments that are hostile to it, from war-torn El Salvador to modern-day Lagos.<\/p>\n
Archive of Unknown Universes: A Novel<\/strong><\/em><\/h3>\nRuben Reyes Jr. (Mariner Books, 288 pp., $28, July 2025)<\/em><\/p>\n
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\n <\/span>\n <\/a><\/div>\nIt is hard to imagine a story more deftly engaged with the political themes of our time than Archive of Unknown Universes<\/em><\/a>. In his debut novel, Salvadoran American author Ruben Reyes Jr. sends his characters on an adventure through a quasi-multiverse to explore alternate outcomes of El Salvador\u2019s 1972-92 civil war\u2014a conflict that had implications for the entire Western Hemisphere.<\/p>\nArchive of Unknown Universes<\/em> begins in 2018. Its protagonists are Ana and Luis, two Salvadoran American students at Harvard University who are dating. Despite trouble in their relationship, Luis travels with Ana to Havana, where she is due to conduct archival research on the Salvadoran Civil War. (The Cuban government aided El Salvador\u2019s leftist rebels.) Ana is \u201cafter dignity for a tiny country, a forgotten country, a country conveniently erased from the map.\u201d Luis has a \u201csuspicion that the trip was a last-ditch attempt to save a relationship on the rocks.\u201d<\/p>\nAlthough she is a diligent researcher, Ana is enamored by a fictional device known as the Defractor, which allows users to render different versions of their lives. The Defractor is experimental technology, still housed mostly in university libraries for academic use, but the \u201covereager American tech sector\u201d seeks to \u201cmake it a hot consumer product, regulation-free.\u201d Debates over the Defractor have obvious parallels to artificial intelligence. \u201cScrolling the internet without seeing an article about the Defractor was impossible,\u201d Reyes Jr. writes; some people \u201csaw the technology as a one-stop solution for all their personal problems.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Defractor lends the story an element of magical realism<\/a>, a literary tradition with strong roots in Latin America. When Ana peeks into a Defractor at the University of Havana, she deviates from her research questions to ask whether her relationship with Luis has a future. In one Defractor-generated reality, she sees herself with another partner. Ana becomes convinced that \u201cthe mystery man, her other boyfriend, held some sort of answer\u201d to lingering questions about her family history. (Both Ana\u2019s and Luis\u2019s mothers fled El Salvador during the war.)<\/p>\nThe Defractor rips the novel\u2019s plot in two. In the first universe\u2014the known universe\u2014U.S. President Ronald Reagan funnels \u201cmillions of dollars in guns, ammunition, and military training into El Salvador,\u201d and the leftist rebels lose. In the second universe, the \u201cSalvadoran Revolution\u201d succeeds because the United States does not intervene. El Salvador becomes a communist success story akin to Cuba.<\/p>\n
Reyes Jr. weaves both universes together to reveal long-buried secrets. Ana and Luis\u2019s fraying bond is contrasted with an intense historical gay romance, condemned \u201cno matter which way the war shifted.\u201d<\/p>\n
It is hard to read Archive of Unknown Universes<\/em> without thinking of El Salvador\u2019s current president, Nayib Bukele, who has fashioned himself a global right-wing icon<\/a> and vociferous proponent of mass incarceration<\/a>. Reyes Jr. was strategic in setting his novel before Bukele came to power in 2019. Bukele has transformed El Salvador, whitewashing authoritarian abuses with flashy tourism campaigns<\/a> and social media stunts<\/a>. His ascent could have disrupted the cadence of novel\u2019s first universe.<\/p>\nBut the fictional communist Salvadoran government and Bukele share some key traits. \u201cAna had read enough to know that aesthetic maintenance was the government\u2019s shield against the world,\u201d she reflects while visiting communist San Salvador. \u201cThe capitol was beautiful, but beauty was not justice.\u201d Certain outcomes remain the same across all universes.\u2014Allison Meakem<\/em><\/p>\nNecessary Fiction: A Novel<\/em><\/strong><\/h3>\nEloghosa Osunde (Riverhead Books, 320 pp., $28, July 2025)<\/em><\/p>\n
\n ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/3-Necessary-fiction-eloghosa-osunde-book-review.jpg?w=401\")
\n <\/span>\n <\/a><\/div>\n\u201cThis is kind of how we get through our lives: we tell ourselves stories so that what\u2019s happening becomes something we can live with. Necessary fictions.\u201d This quote by Lidia Yuknavitch is an epigraph\u2014and a guiding tenet\u2014in Nigerian author Eloghosa Osunde\u2019s second novel, a feverish celebration of queer life in Lagos, a \u201cfast city\u201d where \u201cshit keeps spinning.\u201d<\/p>\n
Like Osunde\u2019s debut Vagabonds!<\/em>, Necessary Fiction<\/em><\/a> is a novel-in-stories. (The first chapter, \u201cGood Boy,\u201d won the Paris Review<\/em>\u2019s Plimpton Prize for fiction in 2021.) It\u2019s structured around a series of vignettes of characters who fight to carve out spaces for themselves in Lagos\u2019s unforgiving sprawl, crafting narratives about their lives that help them get by, even thrive, in the margins of a society that criminalizes queerness.<\/p>\nAt times, that\u2019s done with the universal language of money. As one character in a relationship with another man notes, \u201ca mad whip is a great way to say, Don\u2019t fuck with me<\/em>, and here the streets need to hear that in pidgin, Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa, plus many other languages. \u2026 Me and K wear rings, but people don\u2019t ask personal questions when they see what you\u2019ve come out of. We bought that right to go unchallenged. It was not cheap.\u201d<\/p>\nMore often, though, their identities are constructed through self-questioning and, importantly, conversations with friends. Osunde\u2019s characters like to shoot the shit, and Necessary Fiction <\/em>is a love letter to the narratives painstakingly crafted about one\u2019s life over the course of dinners, raves, \u201ctruth circles\u201d around backyard fires, and watching Powerpuff Girls<\/em> reruns at a friend\u2019s apartment.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
Despite the novel\u2019s strong sense of place, the vocabulary of these heart-to-hearts will be familiar to 20- and 30-something urbanites everywhere. Osunde\u2019s characters feel horror at their ability to just get on with their lives in the face of state brutality (in their case, the 2020 #EndSARS crackdown<\/a>). They want to be fierce activists but remain \u201csoft\u201d and lead lives that feel \u201csustainable.\u201d They sob freely. They dissociate; they have side quests. They talk\u2014a lot\u2014about boundaries. \u201cI think the more I live, the more I can see that boundaries can apply to everything. Even spirits. Even God,\u201d one character tells another.<\/p>\nIn another writer\u2019s hands, these discursions might feel overly indulgent. But it\u2019s hard not to care for these characters, who are brazen and achingly earnest, rendered utterly human in Osunde\u2019s expansive prose. Many of them are burdened by the weight of their families, which exist \u201cbehind them in memory-clots.\u201d For them, friendship is perhaps the deepest form of love, and together, they crawl \u201cthrough loopholes in an unfair system, building a safe world inside a city that always wants blood.\u201d\u2014Chloe Hadavas<\/em><\/p>\n\n This article is featured in the FP Weekend newsletter, a curation of our best book reviews, deep dives, and other reads that take a step back from the drumbeat of the news. Get the lineup directly every Saturday. <\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
\n
\n <\/span>
It is hard to imagine a story more deftly engaged with the political themes of our time than Archive of Unknown Universes<\/em><\/a>. In his debut novel, Salvadoran American author Ruben Reyes Jr. sends his characters on an adventure through a quasi-multiverse to explore alternate outcomes of El Salvador\u2019s 1972-92 civil war\u2014a conflict that had implications for the entire Western Hemisphere.<\/p>\n Archive of Unknown Universes<\/em> begins in 2018. Its protagonists are Ana and Luis, two Salvadoran American students at Harvard University who are dating. Despite trouble in their relationship, Luis travels with Ana to Havana, where she is due to conduct archival research on the Salvadoran Civil War. (The Cuban government aided El Salvador\u2019s leftist rebels.) Ana is \u201cafter dignity for a tiny country, a forgotten country, a country conveniently erased from the map.\u201d Luis has a \u201csuspicion that the trip was a last-ditch attempt to save a relationship on the rocks.\u201d<\/p>\n Although she is a diligent researcher, Ana is enamored by a fictional device known as the Defractor, which allows users to render different versions of their lives. The Defractor is experimental technology, still housed mostly in university libraries for academic use, but the \u201covereager American tech sector\u201d seeks to \u201cmake it a hot consumer product, regulation-free.\u201d Debates over the Defractor have obvious parallels to artificial intelligence. \u201cScrolling the internet without seeing an article about the Defractor was impossible,\u201d Reyes Jr. writes; some people \u201csaw the technology as a one-stop solution for all their personal problems.\u201d<\/p>\n The Defractor lends the story an element of magical realism<\/a>, a literary tradition with strong roots in Latin America. When Ana peeks into a Defractor at the University of Havana, she deviates from her research questions to ask whether her relationship with Luis has a future. In one Defractor-generated reality, she sees herself with another partner. Ana becomes convinced that \u201cthe mystery man, her other boyfriend, held some sort of answer\u201d to lingering questions about her family history. (Both Ana\u2019s and Luis\u2019s mothers fled El Salvador during the war.)<\/p>\n The Defractor rips the novel\u2019s plot in two. In the first universe\u2014the known universe\u2014U.S. President Ronald Reagan funnels \u201cmillions of dollars in guns, ammunition, and military training into El Salvador,\u201d and the leftist rebels lose. In the second universe, the \u201cSalvadoran Revolution\u201d succeeds because the United States does not intervene. El Salvador becomes a communist success story akin to Cuba.<\/p>\n Reyes Jr. weaves both universes together to reveal long-buried secrets. Ana and Luis\u2019s fraying bond is contrasted with an intense historical gay romance, condemned \u201cno matter which way the war shifted.\u201d<\/p>\n It is hard to read Archive of Unknown Universes<\/em> without thinking of El Salvador\u2019s current president, Nayib Bukele, who has fashioned himself a global right-wing icon<\/a> and vociferous proponent of mass incarceration<\/a>. Reyes Jr. was strategic in setting his novel before Bukele came to power in 2019. Bukele has transformed El Salvador, whitewashing authoritarian abuses with flashy tourism campaigns<\/a> and social media stunts<\/a>. His ascent could have disrupted the cadence of novel\u2019s first universe.<\/p>\n But the fictional communist Salvadoran government and Bukele share some key traits. \u201cAna had read enough to know that aesthetic maintenance was the government\u2019s shield against the world,\u201d she reflects while visiting communist San Salvador. \u201cThe capitol was beautiful, but beauty was not justice.\u201d Certain outcomes remain the same across all universes.\u2014Allison Meakem<\/em><\/p>\n Eloghosa Osunde (Riverhead Books, 320 pp., $28, July 2025)<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cThis is kind of how we get through our lives: we tell ourselves stories so that what\u2019s happening becomes something we can live with. Necessary fictions.\u201d This quote by Lidia Yuknavitch is an epigraph\u2014and a guiding tenet\u2014in Nigerian author Eloghosa Osunde\u2019s second novel, a feverish celebration of queer life in Lagos, a \u201cfast city\u201d where \u201cshit keeps spinning.\u201d<\/p>\n Like Osunde\u2019s debut Vagabonds!<\/em>, Necessary Fiction<\/em><\/a> is a novel-in-stories. (The first chapter, \u201cGood Boy,\u201d won the Paris Review<\/em>\u2019s Plimpton Prize for fiction in 2021.) It\u2019s structured around a series of vignettes of characters who fight to carve out spaces for themselves in Lagos\u2019s unforgiving sprawl, crafting narratives about their lives that help them get by, even thrive, in the margins of a society that criminalizes queerness.<\/p>\n At times, that\u2019s done with the universal language of money. As one character in a relationship with another man notes, \u201ca mad whip is a great way to say, Don\u2019t fuck with me<\/em>, and here the streets need to hear that in pidgin, Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa, plus many other languages. \u2026 Me and K wear rings, but people don\u2019t ask personal questions when they see what you\u2019ve come out of. We bought that right to go unchallenged. It was not cheap.\u201d<\/p>\n More often, though, their identities are constructed through self-questioning and, importantly, conversations with friends. Osunde\u2019s characters like to shoot the shit, and Necessary Fiction <\/em>is a love letter to the narratives painstakingly crafted about one\u2019s life over the course of dinners, raves, \u201ctruth circles\u201d around backyard fires, and watching Powerpuff Girls<\/em> reruns at a friend\u2019s apartment.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Despite the novel\u2019s strong sense of place, the vocabulary of these heart-to-hearts will be familiar to 20- and 30-something urbanites everywhere. Osunde\u2019s characters feel horror at their ability to just get on with their lives in the face of state brutality (in their case, the 2020 #EndSARS crackdown<\/a>). They want to be fierce activists but remain \u201csoft\u201d and lead lives that feel \u201csustainable.\u201d They sob freely. They dissociate; they have side quests. They talk\u2014a lot\u2014about boundaries. \u201cI think the more I live, the more I can see that boundaries can apply to everything. Even spirits. Even God,\u201d one character tells another.<\/p>\n In another writer\u2019s hands, these discursions might feel overly indulgent. But it\u2019s hard not to care for these characters, who are brazen and achingly earnest, rendered utterly human in Osunde\u2019s expansive prose. Many of them are burdened by the weight of their families, which exist \u201cbehind them in memory-clots.\u201d For them, friendship is perhaps the deepest form of love, and together, they crawl \u201cthrough loopholes in an unfair system, building a safe world inside a city that always wants blood.\u201d\u2014Chloe Hadavas<\/em><\/p>\nNecessary Fiction: A Novel<\/em><\/strong><\/h3>\n
\n
\n <\/span>\n This article is featured in the FP Weekend newsletter, a curation of our best book reviews, deep dives, and other reads that take a step back from the drumbeat of the news. Get the lineup directly every Saturday. <\/h2>\n<\/p>\n