Publisher Description

"The masterful wedding of the narrative and the lyric in these poems (whose subject is the maturation of a sensibility, the coming-of-age of a young Englishwoman--the power of her ties to family, husband and her 'adopted' country, Nigeria--as well as the illumination of her own soul and that of the narrator's) fills the reader with both sorrow a

Author Biography

Chris Abani, curator of Akashic's Black Goat poetry imprint, is a Nigerian poet and novelist and the author of Song for Night, The Virgin of Flames, Becoming Abigail, and GraceLand (a selection of the Today Show Book Club; winner of the 2005 PEN/Hemingway Prize and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award).

Long Description

"The masterful wedding of the narrative and the lyric in these poems (whose subject is the maturation of a sensibility, the coming-of-age of a young Englishwoman--the power of her ties to family, husband and her 'adopted' country, Nigeria--as well as the illumination of her own soul and that of the narrator's) fills the reader with both sorrow and wonder. It is an instructive tale for our age--its vision of the individual will and imagination resisting the madness of politics and the destruction of war is singular and profound." --Carol Muske-Dukes

Details