Review of The Virgin of Flames from IR 29.2

[Shana A]

Review of The Virgin of Flames from IR 29.2

http://indianareview.blogspot.com/2008/03/review-of-virgin-of-flames-from-ir-291.html

Chris Abani, The Virgin of Flames. New York: Penguin Books, 2007. $14.00 paperback (ISBN-978-0-14-303877-1), 291 pages.

Acclaimed novelist/poet/saxophonist Chris Abani is known as much for his startling personal history (thrice imprisoned in his native Nigeria for his writings, sentenced to death, tortured), as for his impressive literary credentials (four books of poetry published, three novels and a novella, awards from Hurston/Wright, PEN Hemingway and the Lannan Literary foundation among others). In Abani's latest novel, The Virgin of Flames, he turns his attention from Nigeria to his most recent home, Los Angeles. Abani's Los Angeles is a kind of mecca for the exiled. Providing an ersatz family for the book's central figure, Black, a muralist who entertains visions of the angel Gabriel, are Sweet Girl, the transsexual stripper on whom Black fixates; .....