Jumia Books Stay with Me Novel by Ayobami Adebayo

If you lie to save your marriage, does it truly count as a betrayal? This is the question at the heart of Stay With Me, a debut novel about a young couple's infertility, set among the coups and counter-coups of early '90s Nigeria. It's a time when thieves and rapists send polite letters to the neighborhood warning they'll be arriving soon; where the news can coolly announce one head of state in the morning and another by night. And it's a time when smiling relatives can arrive with a second wife and expect the first to prepare lunch for her, presenting the unthinkable under the same polite guise.

As the novel begins, Yejide and Akin, who met in a mutual coup de foudre at university, are finding their marriage sorely tested by their inability to have a child. Pushing the question towards crisis, however, are their older relatives, who drag Yejide to herbalists and Akin towards polygamy to solve the problem.