This is the first full-length book on the work of 'global Igbo' writer Chris Abani. The volume dedicates a chapter to each of Abani's fiction books, the two novellas Becoming Abigail (2006) and Song for Night (2007), the three novels GraceLand (2004), The Virgin of Flames (2007), and The Secret History of Las Vegas (2014), which are read against the grain of Abani's most important essays and poetical production. By combining close readings and more theoretical reflections, this volume provides a significant insight for both scholars and students interested in the literature produced by the emerging African voices in the twentieth-first century, in the debate about human rights, and in general in how aesthetics is deeply linked with ethics.

Annalisa Oboe and Elisa Bordin

1. Contexts and intertexts
2. Peripheral violence: GraceLand
3. Trafficking love, Becoming Abigail
4. No words for violence? Song for Night
5. For Los Angeles, with love: The Virgin of Flames
6. 'State' violence: The Secret History of Las Vegas
7. Critical overview and conclusion
Select bibliography
Index