The House Of Petitions

Nobody in the house refuses her. That is how they bury her.

Every Thursday, a widow named Nneoma sits on a bench in a government registry and waits for a stamp to fall on her petition. Every Thursday it doesn't. Her file is receiving attention. It was resolved at source. It is not receivable as presently constituted. Nothing in the house is ever denied — it is only worded, and minuted, and shelved in the wrong bay, until the woman who brought it stops coming.

Then a clerk reads one paragraph he was not meant to read, and cannot put it back.

The House of Petitions is a novel in nine movements about the machinery of polite refusal — the bench, the shelf, the stamp, and the men who learned long ago that a thing written carefully enough can be made to mean nothing at all. Nneoma carries a second paper sewn into the lining of her wrapper. Michael is the clerk who still stands when a woman enters a room. Ngozi knows what the laminated notice on the wall does not say. Above them sits a director whose kindness is a currency, and above him a senator whose claim to the land is not in a village but in a name.

By the last page everyone has been paid. Some in stamps. Some in flesh. One in a heading typed neatly enough to survive an audit.

"The house does not date what it has not received."

What you get

— The complete novel: 88 pages, nine movements, thirty-six chapters

— Instant PDF download, first edition

— Published by Track Z

A companion to The Weight of Agbada. Complete on its own.