Graceland: A Novel
In his novel about a black Elvis impersonator living in the slums of Lagos, Nigeria, Chris Abani presents a lyrical and terrifying glimpse of a place saturated in American icons and pop culture, but entirely unlike America. In this melting pot, the disparate ingredients—John Wayne and King Kong, Bob Marley and Bollywood, Wole Soyinka and native Igbo rituals—are at a roiling boil.
Abani was imprisoned at the hands of the military regime in Nigeria in the mid-1980s. His poems and this novel speak with the authority of that experience, but GraceLand is far from propaganda. It raises complicated questions of moral responsibility in communities that are at the mercy of absolute and absolutely corrupted powers.
The novel's weakness lies in its organization; important characters and themes disappear, their emotional weight left hanging. But the momentum of this Elvis' coming-of-age story is nonetheless powerful. His friend Redemption leads him into the darkness of Lagos' criminal underworld. Elvis' resistance to the compromises he is asked to make—Where, he asks, do the drugs he is packaging go?—ends up risking both his and Redemption's lives.
Elvis' morality makes him ultimately unfit for life in Lagos. America, the birthplace of the real Elvis and the land of better impersonating opportunities, remains the promised land. It's a welcome promise of hope and change—for Elvis. But Abani runs the risk of indicting everyone who remains in Lagos; after all the beauty he has shown us amid the horror, that seems unfair.
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