Kalakuta Republic

Chris Abani is a Nigerian poet and novelist. Publications include The Virgin of Flames (Penguin, 2007), Song For Night (Telegram, 2008) and Graceland (FSG/Picador 2005). He is a professor at the University of California and the recipient of many prizes, including the PEN USA Freedom-to-Write Award, the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, a Lannan Literary Fellowship and the PEN Hemingway Prize.

'A beautiful work of art . . . elevates art and humanity above meanness and inhumanity.' World Literature Today; 'An unheralded chunk of authentic literature . . . Abani has lived to tell his tale, the least we can do, is listen to it.' New Statesman; 'A brave and challenging book . . . I was moved as much by what the poems have achieved as by what they have rescued from that nightmare world. Reading, I found myself in tears.' Sunday Tribune; 'Abani's poems are the most naked, harrowing expression of prison life and political torture imaginable. Reading them is like being singed by a red hot iron.' Harold Pinter;'Abani's survival instinct and his poems contain moments of grace, humanity and humor.' Susannah Tarbush, Diwaniya; 'Abani's poetry resonates with a devastating beauty which cuts through to the heart of human strength, survival and tyranny.' Pride;'Chris has emerged with poems that are graceful pieces of art, almost ready to be hung in a gallery for others to come and enter them and rest in them and weep in them and admire them.' Kwame Dawes, professor of English literature, University of Columbia, South Carolina, USA