Stay with Me
Yejide and Akin are educated, urbane, deeply in love, and four years into a marriage that has refused to produce a child, which in Akin's family in 1980s Nigeria is a problem the whole extended household feels entitled to solve. When Akin's mother arrives with a second wife she has selected for him and simply installs her in the house, the quiet negotiated contract Yejide thought she had with her husband begins to come apart. Over the following decade, against the backdrop of political assassinations and military coups, the couple accumulates a set of specific, escalating secrets, each one told in service of saving the marriage, each one making it less possible to save. Ayòbámi Adébáyò's 2017 debut, shortlisted for the Women's Prize, is a short, unsparing family novel about a love that keeps choosing the wrong lies.
Themes & atmosphere
What you might want to know about Stay with Me
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
Yejide and Akin married for love in 1980s Nigeria, with no plans for a second wife. When years pass without a child, his family arrives with one. The novel walks through what each of them did to keep the marriage.
Yes. Stay with Me was shortlisted for the 2017 Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction. It was Ayobami Adebayo's debut novel and is one of the most acclaimed Nigerian literary novels of recent years.
Stay with Me includes depictions of infertility, polygamy, infant mortality, and political violence. The themes are central to the plot. Readers sensitive to these subjects should approach with care.
Stay with Me was written by Ayòbámi Adébáyò, published in 2017 by Ouida.
Stay with Me is 304 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Stay with Me takes most readers 5 to 7 hours to finish.
Stay with Me is a standalone novel by Ayòbámi Adébáyò, not part of a series.
Stay with Me is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.