Poetry. African Studies. "DAPHNE'S LOT (AN EPIC) is an event of history, myth, and knowledge in the event of war and the ongoing turbulence of being human. With the language of hard truth lifted by singing Abani speaks what is impossible to speak. His poetry makes a shine in the hellish bogs where it is rare to see shine. Kindness is the measure of these poems. It's a beautiful and tough poetry"-Joy Harjo. "DAPHNE'S LOT is an absolute tour de force! The title poem is an exceptionally poignant novella in verse, celebrating the courage and determination of the poet's mother while charting his family's difficult flight out of Biafra to England. Masterfully conceived and often wrenching in the harsh details of it vignettes, DAPHNE'S LOT reminds us of poetry's essential force-and constant triumph-in giving voice to the most trying of human circumstances. Chris Abani's new collection is a revelation and victory in every way"-David St. John. 112pp.


The masterful wedding of the narrative and the lyric in these poems (whose subject is the maturation of a sensibility, the coming-of-age of a young Englishwoman - the power of her ties to family, husband and her "adopted" country, Nigeria - as well as the illumination of her own soul and that of the narrator's) fills the reader with both sorrow and wonder. It is an instructive tale for our age - its vision of the individual will and imagination resisting the madness of politics and the destruction of war is singular and profound. (Description by Carol Muske-Dukes)

Born in 1966 at the beginning of the Biafran-Nigerian civil war, Abani lived a childhood of privilege, growing up with servants, cooks, nannies, the things the typical Nigerian, locked in a continual struggle with poverty, corruption, and violence, could barely dream of. When he was 16 he published his first novel, a thriller called Masters of the Board that won awards and got him anointed “Africa’s answer to Frederick Forsyth,” an appellation he refers to now with a grin.

He was thrown in jail two years after the book was published because the government believed it served as the foundation for a failed coup attempt. Abani spent time in prison on three occasions for his “subversive” writings, once in solitary confinement in the Kiri Kiri maximum security facility that few made it out of alive. After his unexplained release, he left for England where he lived for several years before moving to the US where he now teaches at the University of California, Riverside.