Akwaeke Emezi’s upcoming 2022 romance novel You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty is set to be adapted as a film. Amazon Studios won the highly competitive bidding battle, and Michael B. Jordan’s Outlier Society will develop. This marks the first major film property acquisition for Jordan.
Emezi credits the title of the novel to the song “Hunger” by Florence + The Machine. In a series of tweets that announced the exciting book deal, Emezi said, “I started the romance novel in 2019, which was one of the worst years of my life, and listening to [Florence + The Machine] stitched me together when my spirit was pulling itself apart. I am so grateful for their work and the way it carved me down to the bone.”
Set in Brooklyn, You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty follows a Nigerian 29-year-old aspiring artist who tragically loses her husband. As she uses art as a mechanism to alleviate her grief, she meets an attractive man who introduces her to a prominent curator that wants to help launch her artistic career. Even with new romance and growing opportunities, she must grapple with learning how to manage her grief and the promising life that lies ahead.
Raised in Aba, Nigeria, Emezi is the bestselling author of three novels, with three more set to be released within the next year. Their refreshingly original debut, Freshwater, is currently in development for a series at FX, along with her YA novel Pet. The Death of Vivek Oji, which was published last August, has received wide acclaim. Emezi’s memoir Dear Senthuran: A Black Spirit Memoir, is set to be released early June. According to the synopsis, the memoir will trace Emezi’s “unfolding of a self and the journey of a creative spirit stepping into power in the human world.”
