Uchechukwu Peter Umezurike is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English and the 2025-2026 Wayne O. McCready Emerging Fellow at the Calgary Institute for the Humanities, University of Calgary, Canada. He is the author of literary works, such as there’s more (2023), Double Wahala, Double Trouble (2021), Wish Maker (2021), and a co-editor of Wreaths for a Wayfarer (2020).

• DedicationAcknowledgementsIntroduction: Woman Wrapper, Domesticating Masculinity and Gender DiscourseChapter One: Precariousness in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall ApartChapter Two: Orthodoxy in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple HibiscusChapter Three: Receptivity in Jude Dibia’s Walking with ShadowsChapter Four: Hospitality in Chinelo Okparanta’s Under the Udala TreesConclusion: The Saliency of Ethical RelationalityWorks CitedIndex

A socially relevant scholarship... Masculinities in Nigerian Fiction expands our sense of and sensibilities towards gender and sexuality. [...] We need Umezurike’s ‘ethic of receptivity’ not only to relate with one another as human equals, but also to recognise the precariousness and grievability of other lives. This recognition may enable us to imagine and create a more egalitarian, more just, more empathetic society where every life will be protected by the nation and the law against cultural and social orthodoxies that insist on their inevitability. Without this, our national ideals, indeed our human ideals, are just what they are: ideals that may not translate into livable futures.