GraceLand: A Novel

By Chris Abani

2004

336 pages / 12 hours and 25 minutes

Fiction

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There is a growing body of rich literature out of Africa now available to U.S. readers. These are works by Americans of African descent, immigrants, and those living on the continent. For instance, there is Uzodinma Iweala’s 2005 novel Beasts of No Nation about child soldiers. An American of Nigerian descent and a Harvard University grad, Iweala wrote this excellent short novel at the ripe old age of 23.

But I think my favorite out of this group is GraceLand. The jacket cover tells us Chris Abani was born in Nigeria, published his first novel at the age of 16, and suffered severe political persecution because of it. He went into exile in 1991 and has since lived in England and the United States. GraceLand was nominated for many literary awards. This is another one of those novels that skirts between memoir and fiction. From the New York Times Book Review, we get the author’s story from Sophie Harrison:

Chris Abani was himself arrested in 1985. He was 18 years old at the time. The Nigerian government suggested that the plot of his first novel, published when he was only 16, had laid the blueprint for a political coup. He was held for six months, during which time he was beaten daily. In 1987 he was arrested again. This time he was sent to Kiri-Kiri, a maximum security prison in Lagos, where he was held for a year. During his incarceration he was tortured. It’s impossible to read the prison scenes in “GraceLand” without remembering these facts.

There is always the possibility that such a novel will devolve into misery porn. But Abani is much too talented a writer to allow this to happen, though some of the book is certainly hard to read.

There is some occasional weirdness. For instance, some chapters begin with recipes, others describing certain plants, others various rituals that I assume are supposed to give us some context (or maybe they are literary pretension). For me they just got in the way of a riveting story. But it is a superb book and, while it is gloomy, there are gloriously sweet scenes as well, which are welcome and not the least bit sentimental.

Abani followed up this work with Song for Night (2007), an excellent short novel about a boy soldier who has lost his voice and lost his platoon as well. Harrowing? Very.

Africa is, of course, a continent and not a country. The literary voices coming from all over Africa are incredibly diverse. African literature was slow to make a dent in the U.S. But as more and more men and women share their stories, they turn out to be very compelling indeed. I am certain that immigration will remain a vexed issue in American politics. But I’m grateful to read these wonderful novels as people tell their own stories rather than have them told by others. GraceLand is a great place to start.