Chris Abani

Uno de los 25 mejores libros del año, según Los Angeles Times

For Black, a mural artist in East L.A., the city's tumbledown landscape is his canvas. Residing in a ramshackle apartment above 'The Ugly Store', he lives for his art and obsesses over Sweet Girl, the transvestite stripper who serves as his muse. Black navigates life alongside the Los Angeles River, 'iridescent in its concrete sleeve', enlisting his friends - Iggy, the beautiful tattoo artist who has beguiled Hollywood's elite, and Bomboy, a wealthy Rwandan butcher - as he confronts his past and struggles to find his place in the world. This is a searing and dazzlingly written novel of a tarnished City of Angels filled with indelible images and unforgettable characters. Chris Abani touches on the far reaches of psychic pain, religious and sexual, and takes the reader on an unforgettable journey.

This powerful collection of poems details the harrowing experiences endured by Abani and other political prisoners at the hands of Nigerias military regime in the late 1980s.Abani vividly describes the characters that peopled this dark world, from prison inmates such as John James, tortured to death at the age of fourteen, to the general overseers. First published after his release from jail in 1991, Kalakuta Republic remains a paean to those who suffered and to the indomitable human spirit.