9/20/2006 - Reading Graceland, by Chris Abani


Reading for a Post Colonial lit class in San Francisco's financial district.

Here's the review by the Washington Post: GraceLand teems with incident, from the seedy crime dens of Maroko to the family melodramas of the Oke clan. But throughout the novel's action, Abani -- an accomplished poet who published his own first novel at Elvis's tender age of 16 -- keeps the reader's gaze fixed firmly on the detailed and contradictory cast of everyday Nigerian life. He shows how decades of authoritarian political rule breed indifference, and indeed weary fatalism, in the face of corruption and political terror, even while symbols of resistance such as the King of the Beggars become cultural heroes. … Chris Lehmann

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