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In this intense novel sixteen year-old Elvis Oke, an Elvis Presley impersonator, struggles to survive in the chaotic Lagos, Nigeria, of 1983. From his deceased mother Beatrice he retains a journal that includes Nigerian recipes that are inserted between the 29 chapters of the novel along with comments on the traditional kola-nut ritual. Occasional chapters constitute flashbacks to the 1970s, when Elvis was growing up in the smaller city of Afikpo, where he learned to read to his grandmother (he remains an avid reader) and took dance lessons. His father Sunday and stepmother Comfort offer him little in the way of a home, so Elvis takes up with the streetwise Redemption (such names as “Sunday,” “Comfort” and “Redemption” are not uncommon in Nigeria), who gets him involved in the cocaine trade and later in smuggling body parts and children for “harvest” under orders from the sinister Colonel. The novel occasionally approaches allegory as the King of the Beggars leads a rebellion against the corrupt government. The title might be seen to apply not only to Elvis Presley’s estate in Tennessee, but also to the protagonist’s search for a land of grace. The complicity of the West is made clear throughout when, for example, the King explains to Elvis how the World Bank operates or when Redemption, speaking of the children to be harvested for body parts, tells him, “No forget de whites who create de demand.” American popular culture, particularly in the form of movies and television, seems to define life in Nigeria as much as the traditional African ways implied by the kola-nut lore and Elvis’s mother’s recipes.

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Author Information

Born in eastern Nigeria, in 1967, Chris Abani wrote his first novel, Masters of the Board, at age sixteen; it won Nigeria’s Delta Fiction Award. Two years later he was imprisoned on political grounds. In 1987, while a student in the university, he was jailed for a year for participation in guerilla theater (political protest), and he was imprisoned yet again in 1990, this time for eighteen months. Nevertheless, he managed to graduate from Imo State University in Owerri, which is located in the Ibo area (formerly Republic of Biafra) with a B.A. in English and literary studies in 1991. In the meantime he wrote two plays and numerous poems. In 1995 Abani received a master’s degree in gender, society, and culture studies at the University of London, and in 2002 he received an M.A. in English from the University of Southern California. His books of poetry include Kalakuta Republic (2000), Daphne’s Lot (2003), Dog Woman (2004), and Hands Washing Water (2006). The author of two novellas, Becoming Abigail (2006) and Song for Night (2007), Abani won the PEN Hemingway Book Prize and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Debut Fiction for GraceLand (2004). His most recent novel, The Virgin of Flames, was published in 2007. Abani is a professor of English at the University of California at Riverside. He is also an accomplished jazz saxophonist.

Discussion Questions

1. As with nearly any novel in which the protagonist is an adolescent, GraceLand concerns coming-of-age and initiation into the adult/real world. In such novels we witness a boy or girl learning (usually) hard lessons in life. What sorts of lessons do you think Elvis learns? Who are his most effective teachers? What does he learn from what you consider to be his most painful lessons? Do you think it is valid in this novel that, as Friedrich Nietzsche wrote, “What does not kill me, makes me stronger”?

2. While many of the most vivid episodes and scenes in this novel are horrifying and brutal, the novel itself does not come across as unbearably dark. One reason for that is that Elvis comes across as a resilient, even “picaresque,” sort of “hero.” The “picaro” or rogue figure, like Huckleberry Finn, gets into and out of trouble, usually survives on the periphery of society, and often is at odds with the law and social convention, but he possesses an upbeat disposition and gets by on his wits. To what extent does Elvis seem to qualify as such a character?

3. Reflect on the roles of various members of Elvis’s splintered family in this novel: his deceased mother Beatrice, his father Sunday, his stepmother Comfort, his grandmother Oye, Uncle Joseph, Aunt Felicia. What does Elvis acquire from each of these relatives?

4. The names of several of Elvis’s relatives listed above, along with those of his friend Redemption and of many others in this novel, including Confidence and Blessing, the Colonel and the King of the Beggars, may have allegorical status; that is, they suggest a significance that surpasses their individual identity or role. Some of the most violent action occurs at a place ironically nicknamed Freedom Square. What do you make of the political and perhaps even spiritual allegory implicit in this novel?

5. What role does American popular culture play in GraceLand, not simply as it involves Elvis Presley, but also as it applies to movies, television shows, and books? Elvis is a voracious but eclectic sort of reader. What writers does Abani mention by way of indicating that Elvis is all over the place in what he reads? What is his favorite book? How does Abani shape his protagonist through such a wide range of reading, or do you detect much evidence of that influence?

6. Most of the dialogue in this novel is offered in Nigerian dialect. As Redemption says of Americans whose child might need an organ transplant, “Like I said, if your only child dey die, you go ask question?” Elvis, however, speaks standard English. Why does Abani distinguish between the speech of his protagonist and that of others in the novel? (His Aunt Felicia, who has immigrated to the United States, significantly speaks standard English but lapses occasionally into dialect.) Does the use of dialect make a positive contribution to the novel?