724 727 WORLDAUTHORS 730 732 LOOO r LOO5 732 734 735 Christopher Abani was born in 1967 in Afikpo, 737 Nigeria, a nation in West Africa that won its independence from Great Britain in 1960. The 739 postcolonial years found Nigeria in the grip of a civil war, a series of oppressive military regimes, 741 increasing tensions between the Christian 744 population and fundamentalist Muslims, and mob violence. In a brief reminiscence for the New York 745 Times Magazine (February 1, 2}o4),Abani recalled that as a 1"0-year-old boy he watched a man 749 accused of stealing be burned alive by an angry "As 750 mob: the man burned, people began to file past him in an orderly manner like the offertory line in "As 754 the Catholic Church I attended," Abani wrote. they walked past, they spat on the incandescent 757 figure. My aunt spat. I looked away, hand held over my nose at the smell of burning flesh, horrified that 760 'Spit,' it reminded me of kebabs. she snapped, 763 rapping me on the head with her knuckles. I spat.' Abani started writing as a teenager and 767 completed his first novel, Masters of the Board, 771 when he was 16. Speaking with Andie Miller for the South Africa MaiI & Guardian (March 1'J.,2005, "a 774 on-line), Abani described his first novel as very crime thriller about neo-Nazis taking over Courtesy of ChristoPher Abani bad / /5 Nigeria to reinstate the Fourth Reich." He "Thrillers 777 explained, were fascinating to me , Christopher because you can indulge all your adolescent 779 fantasies about guns and women in them. I thought '- Poet; novelist; playwright it would bring me fame and wealth." The 780 manuscript won Nigeria's Delta Fiction Award, in published two years later. Abani ,.784 political dissident in his native Nigeria, 1"983,and was was then arested for treason by the Nigerian istopher Abani has endured imprisonment, government, then under General Ibrahim "However much deserves hure, and exile. [he] Babangida.The head of the Association of Nigerian -spect for his political courage," Dan Cryer wrote Authors, General Mamman Vatsa-who also fu the Chicago Tribune (February 29, 2oo4), happened to be Abani's mentor at the time-was tat's no rationale for praising his fiction aciused of plotting a coup and using Abani's novel "In Es writing can stand on its own." Since his first as a blueprint. the novel certain strategictargets 1ovel, Masters of the Board, debuted in 1985, had to be blown up, and when he [Vatsa] was rhen he was still a teenager,Abani has published arrested he was carrying a copy [ofl my novel," *veral other works, among them the poetry Abani told Miller. Abani was imprisoned for six he had not ollections Kalakuta Republic (2000), Daphne's months, and though, as he told Miller, been political before his internment, he emerged Int {2oog), and Dog Woman t2oo4), as well as the "a from prison with mix of idealism and a saviour eitically acclaimed novel GraceLand (2oo4). complex." -GmceLand," Merle Rubin wrote for the Los "amply In 1987, while a university student, Abani ran Angeles Times (April 5, 2oo4), afoul of the authorities once again, this time for demonstrates that Abani has the energy, ambition belonging to an allegedly subversive theater group and compassion to create a novel that delineates that conducted impromptu performances outside and illuminates a complicated, dynamic, deeply of government buildings. The manuscript for his fractured society." second novel, Siroccr'a tale of Palestinian ABANI degree in English from the University of terroiists planting a biological agent in Europe's master's California (USC). water trrppty-*is seized by the government, and Southern poems contained in Abani's 2003 Abani wai sent to Kiri-Kiri, an infamous prison The Daphne's Lot, address war and located in the Nigerian capital of Lagos, where he compilation, as *"il as the universal themes of was subjected to [orture, before being released one viol6nce, "I'm and coming-of-age.In a representative year later. not sure what they were thinking compassion Ronald Gottesman, a professor emeritus at *httt they released me," he told Michael Datcher revi6w "Chris wrote, as quoted on Abani's Web site, for Blaci lssues Book Review (May-June 2005)' USC, iemind us of what happens.when "That I would stoP making art?" Abani's poems are obliterated and the In 1991 Abani giaduated magna cum laude from moral ioundaries of life becomes a kind of cynical ioke' Imo State UniverJity in Imo, Owerri, Nigeria, with sacredness poems also remind us of the human a bachelor's degreein English and literary studies' But these capacitv f* .o-p"ssion and love in the face of For his univeisity's convocation ceremony, -he crueity and fiendish conditions"' wrote Song of a Bioken Flute, a controversial play un'speatable novel GtaceLand is set in the late 1970s that critici-zed the rampant corruption in Nigeria's ibani's a slum on the outskirts government; the government responded. by and early 1980s in Maroko, The protagonist of- this dark irresting him a third time. Sentenced to death of Lag"os. - " is Efuis Oke, a bookish Nigerian Abani endured almost two Years of bildung-sroman earns his by impersonating his imprisonment-six months of which h-e spent in teenagJr who living Elvis Presley, for tourists' Elvis's solitary confinement-before friends bribed prison nameiake, father, Sunday, is unemployed, officials to arrange for his escape. widowed bereft of hope for himself and his Settling in Gieat Britain Abani completed a alcoholic, and Elvis, in his slruggle to escape his master's i"gt"* in gender, society, and culture at country. enters Nigeria's- criminal under- Birkbeck Cdllege, at the University of London, in ,nr.orrnditgt, in drugs and human or-8ansfor 1995. He then wrote a collection of poems, world, trafflcking atta siniJter figure, dubbed the Kalakuta Republic, that served as a sort of prison a mysterious Scattered throughout are excerpts {rom memoir in verse. In an interview posted on the Colonel. mother'sJoutnal, which recall the Voices in Wartime Web site, Abani explained that Elvis's deceased earlier life in the countryside, with its he began writing poetry i1 an attempt to cap.ture family's "What folklore and recipes. Though some critics his eiperienceJ is a political prisoner: singuiar passages from Elvis's mother did not really dr"- -" to poetry, I suppose you could say, felt" the seamlessly with the rest of the story, is ttre brevity in it. It's a form that resists always m-esh by and large earned higl, praise, sentimentaliiy. And when you are dealing wilh a GraieLand for its evocation of the sqrralid streets difficult subject, sentimentality is a- problem 'ofparticularly in a passagequoted by Chris Lehmann for because yon'i" sign-posting hory people. should L"got; iVashingion Posf-(February- Abani feel." Delcribed by Robert Winder for the New ttre "Half-3, -2oo4), "a the Maroko slum: of the town was Statesman(May 21, 2001) as sequenceof po-ems described confused mix of clapboard, wood, cement scraped from the harsh walls of a prison cell in built of a "short' sheets,raised above a swamp by means of Nigeiia," KalakutaRepublic is composed of and zinc and wooden walkways. The other half, built bloodstained notes frbm a -Oneplace where few of us stilts ground reclaimed from the sea,seemed to have any wish to go." poem from the on solid "Ode its way out of the primordial swamp, collection, to Joy" as quoted on the Web site be clawiig to become something else." Writing for of the New Zealand Electronic Poetry Centre, attemptinf 'l"J', "John Globe (April 2oo4), Melvin Jules details the brutal death of a young inmate: the Bostin "Abini's GtaceLand is both a 14 / Refused to serve his conscience up / to Bukiet opined, James, on urban decay and a coming-of- indict an innocent man / handcuffed to chair; they poetic *"ditutio.t picaresqu€' . Abani creates an intensely tacked his penis / to the table / with a six inch nail ase portraii of an artificial nation whose people / and left him there / to drip / to death / s days .rl"i,i emotional vigor as natural resources latet." The British playwright Harold Pinter have alsmuch some have as much likelihood of avowed, as quoted on Abani's official Web site, and, scarily, potential as making the most "Abani's podmt are the most naked, harrowing throwing away their Harrisbn wrote for the New Yotk expression of prison life and political torture of it." S"ophie Review (February 22, 2oo4) that the irnaginable. Reading them is like being singed by Times nobt< a Nigerian teen doing Elvis P-resley a red hot iron." notion of wal "almost too weird to swallow"' While Abani was living in Great Britain, the impressions "The however, book works Nigerian government accuied him of treason and Sh; admitted, in two ways. As a convincinB soieht tJ have him extradited. When Abani's brilliantly 1nd record of life in a poor Nigerian neig'hbor,the only other Nigerianin the alartment unpatronizing as a frighteningly honest insight in-tq buiiding, was mysteriously murdered, the writer shin, and 1 by Iasual violence, it's wondetful"' began t"o suspeci that he was being targeted for world skewed Abani published the novella Becoming assassination-by agents from his homeland' He In 2006 another- coming-of-age tale about a subsequently leh Gieat Britain and moved to Los Abigail, youth, but with a female protagonist this Angel6s, Cilifornia.