| The
Virgin of Flames ( Penguin January 2007)
New York Times Editor's Choice.
Barnes and Noble Discovery
Selection
For Black, a mural artist in East L.A., his 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 transsexual stripper who serves as his muse. As Black navigates
life alongside the Los Angeles River, "iridescent in its concrete
sleeve," he enlists 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.
Advance Praise:
Chris Abani reveals Los Angeles as we have never seen it before
- magical and crumbling, a place of deserted rooftop oases and intersections
where new identities are bought and sold. He has rewritten our American
story and brought the world into our streets, our most private negotiations
and confessions.
— Walter Mosely
A powerful, scary and beautiful novel. Abani
is a force to be reckoned with, a world-class novelist and poet.
— Russell Banks
Chris Abani is
a force of nature. In the world of letters he is a luminous shattering
talent, and The Virgin of Flames is his strangest and wildest trip
yet. I don't think there's ever been a protagonist quite like Black,
or an LA quite like this one.
— Junot Diaz
From the Critics:
“…you are bound to find yourself moved and entertained
by an iridescent novel from a writer who has come through Lagos
and London to take his place as one of our newest, and most gifted,
native sons.”
The Chicago Tribune
“Ambitious and original…Abani’s Los Angeles is
at turns desolate and luminous…a place that is horrifying
and tender and absurd in equal measure”
The New York Times
“[Abani] creates an antic atmosphere that recalls Pirandello…”
The New Yorker
“What is most moving here is Abani's earnest love poem to
this particular Los Angeles…”
The Los Angeles
Times
“Abani has established himself as an unflinching advocate
for individuals exiled to society's underside…Redolent of
the hunger and doom of Nathanael West, lush and surreal as L.A.'s
street murals, and combustible with denied eroticism and thwarted
spirituality, Abani's feverish portrait of a haunted artist embodies
post-9/11 anxiety and the longing for peace.”
Booklist
“Our guide through this westernmost
circle of the American hell… What is most arresting ...isn't
the grotesqueness Abani observes...but the pathos he unfailingly
finds alongside it like a jewel in the muck.”
The Boston Globe
"With its complex characters and exquisitely
imagined cityscapes, The Virgin of Flames is the work of a top-notch
writer."
Time Out New York
"Abani is a muscular, lyrical stylist,
[who]has crafted a cleareyed and compassionate portrait of an urban
underclass."
Washington City Paper.
“Abani touches on the far reaches of
psychic pain, religious and sexual, and creates a hallucinatory
despair.”
Publishers Weekly
"In a novel full of such dazzlingly
apt images, Abani shows that the coming-to-America narrative, far
from being played out, may be just beginning, and that it's by no
means limited to those who've just arrived."
The Gazette (Canada)
“A bleak, searing and sad portrait
of outcasts.”
Kirkus
“[Abani] has artfully exposed Los Angeles’ heart of
darkness in The Virgin of Flames… With a command of Los Angeles’
underbelly reminiscent of Walter Mosley at his most striking, Abani
spirits his angst-ridden artist toward a breathtakingly unexpected,
if perhaps inescapable, conclusion.”
Bookpage
“Through symbolism both Catholic and apocalyptic, Abani lets
his vast descriptive powers run wild.”
Entertainment Weekly
“Abani concentrates on creating atmospheric tableaux…”
The Seattle Times
"stunning in the way a dazzling mural
on the freeway appears in the fast lane"
San Antonio Current
"...full of passages of lyrical beauty
that render the cultural melange of modern-day Los Angeles with
openhearted grace."
The Philadelphia Inquirer |
