Review by: Melvin Jules Bukiet, Boston Globe | 4/11/2004
Americans know very little about the rest of the world. The rest of the world, however, knows a great deal about us. In Nigeria, for example, they know about our money, our movie stars, and our music. Nigerian culture is therefore a fertile mix of indigenous forms pollinated by contact with the United States. Indeed, Lagos may be the only place besides Memphis (Tennessee, not Egypt) where it seems entirely natural for a young man, the protagonist of Chris Abani's multilayered new novel, ''GraceLand," to be named Elvis.
Like many Nigerians, Elvis has had a hard life. His mother, Beatrice, died young and his father, Sunday, is ''a good man who has lost his way." Once a civic leader in the provincial town of Afikpo, Sunday has abandoned any hope he once had for himself or his nation. Now father and son have moved to the capital, where Sunday is a jobless alcoholic living off a new woman, and Elvis is a teenager on the loose.
Abani portrays Elvis's new home with vibrant anthropomorphic prose. On the first page, we get a storm that ''drowned" out all other sounds, the foundation of a building that ''wore green mold" and ''taps [that] stood in yards, forlorn and lonely." Even an architectural description of Maroko, the slum district where most of the book occurs, hums: ''Half of the town was built of a confused mix of clapboard, wood, cement and zinc sheets, raised above a swamp by means of stilts and wooden walkways. The other half, built on ground reclaimed from the sea, seemed to be clawing its way out of the primordial swamp, attempting to become something else." And just as human attributes are used to enliven objects, so this depiction of the city characterizes the book's protagonist.
Elvis, clawing his way out of the urban swamp, yearns for an artistic life. He goes from imitating the American hero whose name he adopted to dancing for cash -- sometimes with lonely women at clubs established for such purposes, and sometimes by himself as a street performer. Unfortunately, busking is not a highly remunerative profession, and Elvis finds himself drawn into low-level criminal enterprise by his friend, Redemption. First, they package drugs for export. Then, they accompany a more serious crew on a mission whose purpose they only accidentally discover when a mysterious cooler topples and spills forth an array of human body parts for export.
More horrifying, the shipment also includes several doleful children whose parts are destined to be harvested if the others go bad.
Arts & Culture 
GraceLand by Chris Abani 
