jock librarian

Set in postcolonial Nigeria, Chris Abani's Graceland tells the tender story of a teenage Elvis impersonator who spends his days entertaining tourists and negotiating Lagos' ghetto walkways. While Elvis' father considers his dancing useless and friends suggest he "let go of his childish dreams," the teen proceeds wistfully determined as he sings "Hound Dog" off-key, imitates the King's hip thrusts and fantasizes about life in America. Abani traces a life of yearning and stirs wishes into a pot of bitter leaf soup. Consider the following early passage from this standout novel:

Giving up on reading, [Elvis] let his mind drift as he stared at the city, half slum, half paradise. How could a place be so ugly and violent yet beautiful at the same time? he wondered.

He hadn't known about the poverty and violence of Lagos until he arrived. It was as if people conspired with the city to weave a web of silence around its unsavory parts. People who didn't live in Lagos only saw postcards of skyscrapers, sweeping flyovers, beaches and hotels. And those who did, when they returned to their ancestral small towns at Christmas, wore designer clothes and threw money around. They breezed in, lived an expensive whirlwind life, and then left after a couple of weeks, to go back to their ghetto lives.

But for one brilliant moment, they dazzled: the women in flashy clothes, makeup and handbags that matched their shoes, daring to smoke in public and drink beer straight from the bottle; and the men, sharp dressers who did not rat on you to your parents if they caught you smoking. They let you take sips of their beer and shoved a few naira into your shirt pocket.