ChrisAbani Bibliography

“The world is never saved in grand messianic gestures, but in the simple accumulation of gentle, soft, almost invisible acts of compassion.” Chris Abani, 2008

Chris AbaniNigerian writer whose poetry, plays, and fiction unflinchingly examines the violence and brutality of war, postcolonial poverty, political corruption, the resulting loss of communal and familial ties in Nigeria as a result of globalization.

Abani was born in 1966 in the Nigerian city of Afikpo, at the start of the Biafran-Nigerian Civil War, a clash between Nigerian federal troops and native secessionists who wanted to create a separate state called “Biafra.” Abani is Igbo- the ethnic group from southeastern Nigeria that had led the Biafran movement.Abani’s father was an educator and political figure who met Abani’s mother, a white English woman, whilst studying at Oxford University. Abani was raised in Africa and attended Catholic school and led amoderately comfortable life. He later described himself as a “privileged, middle-class activist” (owing this to his father)andbegan protesting the Nigerian military dictatorship that came into power after the civil war.

Abani’s political activism and voice found its way into his first book, Masters of the Board. The book’s plot controversiallydetails a failed Nigerian coup by neo-Nazis and ultimately led to Abani’s imprisonment; he was later jailed again due to the political content of his writing in Sirocco, and was then convicted of treason following a performance of his play, Song for a Broken Flute. Because of the subversive nature of his performance, Abani was sentenced to death, tortured, and spend a year and a half in solitary confinement. When he was finally released, Abanileft the country and went to England with his mother and 4 siblings. There, he continued to politically protest the Nigerian regime through his writings. In 1999, Abani fled to the US, after his friend was brutally murdered.

Much of his 2004 novel, GraceLand, traces Abani’s own path and memories of post-war aftermath during the 1970s and 1980s in Nigeria’s capital city, Lagos.Like Abani, Elvis Oke experiences the fragmentation and loss of Nigerian life in aftermath of war in the unspeakable violence and corruption of the rural towns and urban ghettos.

List of Published Works

Fiction

  • Masters of the Board(Enugu: Delta, 1984).
  • Sirocco(Nigeria: Swan, 1987).
  • GraceLand(New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2004).
  • Becoming Abigail(New York: Akashic Books, 2006).
  • Song for Night(New York: Akashic Books, 2007).
  • The Virgin of Flames(New York: Penguin, 2007).
  • The Secret History of Las Vegas(New York: Penguin, 2014).

Short Stories

  • 'The Lion',Statesman Newspaper(Owerri), 1978.
  • 'Jazz Petals', inBurning Words, Flaming Images: Poems and Short Stories by Writers of African Descent, vol. 1, ed. KadijaSesay (London: S.A.K.S. Publications, 1996), pp. 22-27.
  • 'Becoming Abigail', inIC3: The Penguin Book of New Black Writing in Britain, ed. Courttia Newland & KadijaSesay (London: Hamish Hamilton, 2000), pp. 247-253.
  • 'Such Sweet Thunder',Story Quarterly(Fall 2002). Also published inem two.
  • 'A Conversation over Tea', inStumbling and Raging: More Politically Inspired Fiction, ed. Stephen Elliott & Greg Larson (San Francisco: MacAdam & Cage Publishing, 2005), pp. 105-106.
  • 'Albino Crow',Callaloo30.3, 'Prose Fiction and Non-Fiction Prose: A Thirtieth Anniversary Issue' (Summer 2007), pp. 721-729. Also inBest African American Fiction 2009, ed. Gerald Lyn Early & E. Lynn Harris (New York: Bantam Books, 2009), pp. 8-20.
  • 'Three Letters, One Song & A Refrain',Daedalus137.1 (Winter 2008), pp. 87-91. Also published inBest African American Fiction 2010, ed. Gerald Early & Nikki Giovanni (New York: One World Books, 2009), pp. 20-26.
  • 'From Four Movements',Callaloo34.3 (Summer 2011), pp. 682-697.

Poetry

  • Kalakuta Republic(London: Saqi Books, 2000).
  • Daphne's Lot(Los Angeles: Red Hen Press, 2003).
  • Dog Woman(Los Angeles: Red Hen Press, 2004).
  • Hands Washing Water(Port Townsend: Copper Canyon Press, 2006).
  • Sanctificum(Port Townsend: Copper Canyon Press, 2010).
  • There Are No Names for Red(Los Angeles: Red Hen Press, 2010).
  • Feed Me the Sun: Collected Long Poems(Leeds: Peepal Tree Press, 2010).

Plays

  • Room at the Top(Imo State Broadcasting Station, Nigeria, 1985). Television.
  • Song of a Broken Flute, dir. Chris Abani (Imo State University, Nigeria, 1990). Performance.
  • The Poet, The Soldier, The Lover and The Paper-Kite Maker, dir. Chris Abani & Antonia Carneval (The Actors' Gang, Los Angeles, USA, 2003). Performance.