Chris Abani

"Not since Jerzy Kosinski's "The Painted Bird" or Agota Kristof's Notebook Trilogy has there been such a harrowing novel about what it's like to be a young person in a war. That Chris Abani is able to find humanity, mercy, and even, yes, forgiveness, amid such devastation is something of a miracle."--Rebecca Brown, author of "The End of Youth" "The moment you enter these pages, you step into a beautiful and terrifying dream. You are in the hands of a master, a literary shaman. Abani casts his spell so completely--so devastatingly--you emerge cleansed, redeemed, and utterly haunted."--Brad Kessler, author of "Birds in Fall" Part "Inferno," part "Paradise Lost," and part Sunjiata epic, "Song for Night" is the story of a West African boy soldier's lyrical, terrifying, yet beautiful journey through the nightmare landscape of a brutal war in search of his lost platoon. The reader is led by the voiceless protagonist who, as part of a land mine-clearing platoon, had his vocal chords cut, a move to keep these children from screaming when blown up, and thereby distracting the other minesweepers. The book is written in a ghostly voice, with each chapter headed by a line of the unique sign language these children invented. This book is unlike anything else ever written about an African war. Chris Abani is a Nigerian poet and novelist and the author of "The Virgin of Flames," "Becoming Abigail" (a "New York Times" Editor's Choice), and "GraceLand" (a selection of the "Today Show" Book Club and winner of the 2005 PEN/Hemingway Prize and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award). His other prizes include a PEN Freedom to Write Award, a Prince Claus Award, and a Lannan Literary Fellowship. He lives and teaches in California.

A gritty novel set against the backdrop of East L. A. follows a struggling artist named Black on a journey of self-discovery that reveals important questions about poverty, ethnicity, and religion in modern-day America. By the author of the award-winning GraceLand. Original. 50,000 first printing.

"Chris Abani's poetry resonates with a devastating beauty which cuts through to the heart of human strength."--Pride Hands Washing Water is Chris Abani's fourth poetry collection--a mischievous book of displacement, exile, ancestry, and subversive humor. The central section, "Buffalo Women," is a Civil War correspondence between lovers that plays on our assumptions about war, gender, morality, and politics. Sweetest Henri, I know we promised to be honest, one to the other, but your recent missive, though welcome as any epistle from you, filled me with a dread that clung like dampness to wet wood. I am terrified for your immortal soul, dear sweet Henri. This mad war of Lincoln is infecting you with a sickness too depraved to even address. . . Abani's writing is ruthless, at times traumatic, and consistently filled with surprising twists and turns.

Chris Abani's Dog Woman is a mesmerizing, haunting, and sometimes subversive exploration of the personal and cultural politics of disempowerment and power. In these heart rousing and lyrically complex poems, the poet enacts the reconstruction of his feminized selves, and his personae struggle to re-form and transform both themselves and the difficult worlds they inhabit. At turns, earthy, enigmatic, devout, outraged, and compassionate, these elemental women's voices ring true, as they sing siren songs, dirges, and hosannas, and as they navigate into new and unknown territories of human will and endurance. Dog Woman is a daring, trailblazing, and important book; it's a vital addition to the poetry of our times.

"The masterful wedding of the narrative and the lyric in these poems (whose subject is the maturation of a sensibility, the coming-of-age of a young Englishwoman—the power of her ties to family, husband and her 'adopted' country, Nigeria—as well as the illumination of her own soul and that of the narrator's) fills the reader with both sorrow and wonder. It is an instructive tale for our age—its vision of the individual will and imagination resisting the madness of politics and the destruction of war is singular and profound." —Carol Muske-Dukes