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Song for Night

by Chris Abani

ISBN13: 9781933354316
ISBN10: 1933354313
Condition: Standard
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Awards

2007 PEN/Beyond Margins Award Finalist

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

Part Inferno, part Paradise Lost, and part Sunjiata epic, Song for Night is the story of a West African boy soldier's lyrical, terrifying, yet beautiful journey through the nightmare landscape of a brutal war in search of his lost platoon. The reader is led by the voiceless protagonist who, as part of a land mine-clearing platoon, had his vocal chords cut; a move to keep these children from screaming when blown up, and thereby distracting the other minesweepers. Written in a ghostly voice, each chapter is headed by a line of the unique sign language these children invented. This book is unlike anything else ever written about an African war.

Review:

"'In his latest novella, Abani renders the inner voice of mute 15-year-old My Luck, the boy leader of a platoon of mine sweepers in an unnamed war-torn African country. When he was 12, the then volunteer rebel had his vocal cords severed (the rest of his team received the same treatment), 'so that we wouldn't scare each other with our death screams.' At the opening of the novella, My Luck awakens after an explosion to find that he has been separated from his unit. During his journey to find his platoon, he reflects on the events of his violent life. Abani is unafraid to evoke My Luck's dark side, and though My Luck's experience with killing is 'a singular joy that is perhaps rivaled only by an orgasm,' his stock-taking also touches on guilt at witnessing his mother's murder, ambivalence about his imam father and tenderness for Ijeoma, a girl in his platoon killed by a mine. Initially, the present-tense narration is at odds with My Luck's inclination toward memory and reflection, but the story becomes more immersive and dreamlike (and, strangely, lucid) over the course of My Luck's quest. Abani finds in his narrator a seed of hope amid the bleak, nihilistic terrain. (Sept.)' Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)"

Review:

"We take a necessary, if lurid, interest in the tragic fate of the child soldier, a figure not especially new in the history of war, but one that remains an unsettling paradox all the same — the ineffable mixing of innocence and terror. The Nigerian writer Chris Abani's latest novella, 'Song for Night,' follows in the wake of two exceptional books exploring the theme of boy soldiers and internecine... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) war on the African continent — Uzodinma Iweala's 'Beasts of No Nation' and Ishmael Beah's memoir, 'A Long Way Gone' — and it also complements Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's award-winning novel, 'Half of a Yellow Sun,' which is set, like Abani's short work, against the backdrop of the Biafran war.

We follow, through interior monologue, the plight of a 15-year-old land mine sweeper called My Luck, cut off from his comrades after an explosion and now on a quest to reunite with his platoon. It's a lonely, frightening task, tramping through abandoned villages, the river full of floating corpses, the stench of death palpable at every turn. While seemingly the war still rages on around him, we witness only the devastating aftermath of the massacres, the burned-out buildings and the solitary, traumatized figures that dot the once thriving landscape. As My Luck finds himself retracing his steps, reintroduced to scenes and flashbacks he would much rather forget, we realize that despite his self-assuredness, his compelling sense of being fully aware of his surroundings, and his dedicated mission, he is being led steadily toward an altogether unexpected place.

The beauty of the work lies in My Luck's haunting narration, an 'inner-speech' that fittingly is one of pained detachment. His calm meditation on his role in the war, his acknowledgment of his guilt and shame — a fraught combination of choice and imposition as he fights, at first, under the rule of a brutal commander and in revenge for his parents' slaughter — is filtered through a voice that, strangely enough, is nonexistent. My Luck, like his fellow rebels, has been silenced. The platoon is mute, their vocal cords severed so that wounded screams do not interfere with the precise operation of diffusing and reclaiming the mines. Instead, the group communicates through a simple system of signs, a tender, indeed touching way of reaching out to one another. The sign for silence, for example, 'is a steady hand, palm flat,' while mercy 'is a palm turning out from the heart.' In a war where 'territory shifts' between the rebels and their enemy 'faster than sand tracking a desert, ground daily gained and lost,' My Luck somehow holds tight to the need to feel compassion, to exercise some form of ethical stability in a world gone mad.

Initiated into the violent crime of rape, he attempts to save himself through the ministrations of his lover, Ijeoma. He wants to wrest back his soul in their defiant coupling, 'to make sure that amongst all that horror, there was still love.' Abani is finely attuned to the sufferings of women, and especially young girls, in a patriarchal, power-obsessed world, and he works with a moral imperative to unravel the bizarre and corrupt practices that supposedly transform boys into men.

The novella gives way to sentimentality at the very end, perhaps a forgivable flaw in a work so committed to an engaged empathy. As readers thousands of miles removed, we cannot disregard the narrator's name: 'My Luck' — his mother's only son, each of his three sisters dying young of illness. As we mouth this term of endearment, we are reminded that geography is indeed a most difficult fate.

Louise Bernard is an assistant professor of English at Georgetown University.

" Reviewed by Louise Bernard, Washington Post Book World (Copyright 2006 Washington Post Book World Service/Washington Post Writers Group)
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Review:

"Chris Abani might be the most courageous writer working right now. There is no subject matter he finds daunting, no challenge he fears. Aside from that, he's stunningly prolific and writes like an angel. If you want to get at the molten heart of contemporary fiction, Abani is the starting point." Dave Eggers, author of What Is the What

Review:

"Not since Jerzy Kosinski's The Painted Bird or Agota Kristof's Notebook Trilogy has there been such a harrowing novel about what it's like to be a young person in a war. That Chris Abani is able to find humanity, mercy, and even, yes, forgiveness, amid such devastation is something of a miracle." Rebecca Brown, author of The End of Youth

Review:

"The moment you enter these pages, you step into a beautiful and terrifying dream. You are in the hands of a master, a literary shaman. Abani casts his spell so completely — so devastatingly — you emerge cleansed, redeemed: and utterly haunted." Brad Kessler, author of Birds in Fall

Review:

"Abani is a fiction writer of mature and bounteous gifts...Abani, himself incarcerated and tortured for his writings and activism in Nigeria in the mid-'80s, writes about the body's capacity for both ecstasy and pain with an honesty and precision rarely encountered in recent fiction..." New York Times Book Review

Review:

"Song for Night has the feel of a prose poem, with its primary focus on imagery (the consumption of fish, the dripping of water, the feverish repetition of dreams) and its spare, musical language. The lyrical intensity of the writing perfectly suits the material." Los Angeles Times

Synopsis:

"Not since Jerzy Kosinski's The Painted Birdor Agota Kristof's Notebook Trilogy has there been such a harrowing novel about what it's like to be a young person in a war. That Chris Abani is able to find humanity, mercy, and even, yes, forgiveness, amid such devastation is something of a miracle."-Rebecca Brown, author of The End of Youth

"The moment you enter these pages, you step into a beautiful and terrifying dream. You are in the hands of a master, a literary shaman. Abani casts his spell so completely-so devastatingly-you emerge cleansed, redeemed, and utterly haunted."-Brad Kessler, author of Birds in Fall

Part Inferno, part Paradise Lost, and part Sunjiata epic, Song for Nightis the story of a West African boy soldier's lyrical, terrifying, yet beautiful journey through the nightmare landscape of a brutal war in search of his lost platoon. The reader is led by the voiceless protagonist who, as part of a land mine-clearing platoon, had his vocal chords cut, a move to keep these children from screaming when blown up, and thereby distracting the other minesweepers. The book is written in a ghostly voice, with each chapter headed by a line of the unique sign language these children invented. This book is unlike anything else ever written about an African war.

Chris Abaniis a Nigerian poet and novelist and the author of The Virgin of Flames, Becoming Abigail(a New York TimesEditor's Choice), and GraceLand(a selection of the Today ShowBook Club and winner of the 2005 PEN/Hemingway Prize and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award). His other prizes include a PEN Freedom to Write Award, a Prince Claus Award, and a Lannan Literary Fellowship. He lives and teaches in California.

Synopsis:

This harrowing novel by Nigerian poet and award-winning novelist Abani tells the story of a West African boy soldiers lyrical, terrifying, yet beautiful journey through the nightmare landscape of a brutal war in search of his lost platoon.

About the Author

Chris Abani, curator of Akashic's Black Goat poetry imprint, is a Nigerian poet and novelist and the author of Song for Night, The Virgin of Flames, Becoming Abigail, and GraceLand (a selection of the Today Show Book Club; winner of the 2005 PEN/Hemingway Prize and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award).

What Our Readers Are Saying

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: Grady Harp, October 9, 2007 (view all comments by Grady Harp)
War From a Child's Vantage

In SONG FOR NIGHT author Chris Abani has achieved what few authors have even dared - relating the grisly aspects of war as seen through the eyes of a warrior child. The mixture of innocence and participation in some of the most gruesome details of war make this novel difficult to read, yet at the same time Abani's narrator, My Luck, is a young lad with whom we not only completely identify in his sharing of his experiences, but also grow to love profoundly. This small book is not only exquisitely crafted - it is a genuine and heartrending little masterpiece.

A West African war-torn nation (probably Abani's own Nigeria where he himself was the victim of the brutality of war) uses children as soldiers. My Luck is part of a small mine diffusing unit, a group of children who were placed in boot camp at age twelve and now at age fifteen are the delicate triggers that determine the presence of field mines, diffusing them, and gathering the then safe mines for weapons for their 'Major'. The children are 'treated' with a surgery that destroys their vocal cords, a brutal means of assuring that when one of the children steps on a live mine his voice will not cry out, signaling the presence of the war unit to the rebels. These mute young soldiers bond, lose each other, and do as they are instructed, creating a life of danger, terror and probable early death, all before they have had the luxury of growing into adults.

My Luck's narration begins as he is thrown in the air by a detonated mine, his fellow 'soldiers' and company believing him dead have left him unconscious in the dirt. My Luck's story is that of a search for his fellow soldiers, a search that triggers recollections of his childhood, his love for a young girl Ijeoma who is killed by a hidden mine, his recurring memories of his nurturing Catholic mother and his deeply religious iman Muslim father, his forced rape of a woman by his commander to prove his manhood, his contact with his elders in visions, his perception of ghosts as his mind and body are starved for food, water, and safety, and his narrowly escaping his enemy's discovery by floating down a river of corpses. My Luck's vision of the world is at once conflicted with a sense of exhilaration that at times equates killing with orgasm. Yet as we follow his mute journey he enters our psyche the way few others characters drawn from the 'world as war' have gained our hearts. 'These are memories. Before we can move from here, we have to relive and release our darkness'.

Abani somehow manages to relate this grisly tale with such sensitive poetic form that he opens windows of light that illuminate both the essence of life and of death. 'Here we believe that when a person dies in a sudden and hard way, their spirit wanders confused looking for its body. Confused because they don't realize they are dead. I know this. Traditionally a shaman would ease such a spirit across to the other world. Now, well, the land is crowded with confused spirits and all the shamans are soldiers.' This is a brilliant little book by a gifted artist. Highly recommended. Grady Harp
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Product Details

ISBN:: 9781933354316
Author:: Abani, Chris
Publisher:: Akashic Books
Subject:: General
Subject:: Children and war
Subject:: Africa, West
Subject:: General Fiction
Publication Date:: September 2007
Binding:: Paperback
Grade Level:: General/trade
Language:: English
Pages:: 164
Dimensions:: 8.28x5.58x.57 in. .43 lbs.

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