The Virgin of Flames
  • Published: 27 November 2017
  • ISBN: 9781784707118
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 304
  • RRP: $30.00

The Virgin of Flames

Formats & editions
EBook
31 Oct 2011
Paperback
27 Nov 2017
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In this edgy and beautiful novel, Los Angeles is filled with indelible images, unforgettable characters and brought to life through Abani's lush, punky prose.

For Black, a mural artist in East L.A., the city's tumbledown landscape is his canvas. Residing in a ramshackle apartment above 'The Ugly Store', he lives for his art and obsesses over Sweet Girl, the transvestite stripper who serves as his muse. Black navigates life alongside the Los Angeles River, 'iridescent in its concrete sleeve', enlisting his friends - Iggy, the beautiful tattoo artist who has beguiled Hollywood's elite, and Bomboy, a wealthy Rwandan butcher - as he confronts his past and struggles to find his place in the world.

Chris Abani touches on the far reaches of psychic pain, religious and sexual, and takes the reader on an unforgettable journey.
  • Published: 27 November 2017
  • ISBN: 9781784707118
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 304
  • RRP: $30.00
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About the author

Chris Abani

Chris Abani's prose includes the novels GraceLand, Masters of the Board and the novellas, Becoming Abigail and Song For Night. His poetry collections are Hands Washing Water , Dog Woman, Daphne's Lot and Kalakuta Republic.

He is an Associate Professor at the University of California, Riverside and the recipient of the PEN USA Freedom-to-Write Award, the Prince Claus Award, a Lannan Literary Fellowship, a California Book Award, a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award & the PEN Hemingway Book Prize.

Praise for The Virgin of Flames

Contains moments of real tenderness and beauty

New Statesmen

Chris Abani reveals Los Angeles as we have never seen it before - magical and crumbling, a place of deserted rooftop oases and intersections where new identities are bought and sold. He has rewritten our American story and brought the world into our streets

Walter Mosely

A powerful, scary and beautiful novel. Abani is a force to be reckoned with, a world-class novelist

Russell Banks

Abani [is] a fluid, closely observant writer

Washington Post

You are bound to find yourself moved and entertained by an iridescent novel from a writer who has come through Lagos and London to take his place as one of our newest, and most gifted, native sons

Chicago Tribune

[Abani] creates an antic atmosphere that recalls Pirandello

The New Yorker

Abani is as adept at portraying [Black's] humanity as he is at portraying the richness of his city. The Virgin of the Flames is fully of beauty and insight. Suspenseful, too

Jane Smiley, Guardian