The main character of the novel is called Ada. Born in southern Nigeria "with one foot on the other side", Ada is Ọgbanje, an Igbo entity (a spiritual being akin to the people who mostly occupy southeastern Nigeria). In an article for BuzzFeed , Emezi writes that Ada's "core conflict was that she was embodied: that she existed, that she had selves, that she was several. I didn't know any other books by African writers that asked or answered the questions I was working with, but I very much wanted to find precedent." Ada’s conflict of "selves" is not a mental illness or a case of multiple personality disorder, but a spiritual conflict that cannot be defined in Western terms because it exists in an Igbo reality. Rooted in an African ontology, the book completely strips the "myth" from mythology. I found it thrilling and unsettling to read.