Author Leo C. Akuwudike has been interviewed on BBC Radio about his new novel, which reworks Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet into a contemporary gay romance.

Romeo & Julio & Friends reimagines the timeless love story into a contemporary tale that celebrates Britain’s LGBTQ+ community.

And in a departure from Shakespeare’s original tragedy, which famously ended with the suicides of Romeo and Juliet, rising Black British-Nigerian author Akuwudike has given his take on the ordeals and heartache of the two ‘star-crossed lovers’ a happy ending.

His story — which follows the rocky relationship of 25-year-old Julio Clifford, a successful gay black British and South African designer, and Romeo Moses, a 29-year-old bisexual white British and Italian Architect/Model — is aimed at promoting LGBTQ+ tolerance at a time when homophobia-related hate crimes continue to escalate.

To counter this, Akuwudike has set out to ‘renormalise’ LGBTQ+ relationships by showing in his novel that the love between people of the same gender is just as “natural and beautiful” as those between men and women.

In Romeo & Julio & Friends, Romeo and Julio are ultimately able to settle down and start a family — but not before having to face prejudice, disapproval, and vicious homophobic assaults along the way.

For all media enquiries, including interviews with author Leo C. Akuwudike or review copies of Romeo & Julio & Friends, contact our book PR publicist Anthony Harvison.