Chris Abani

The Virgin of Flames

  • The Virgin of Flames

  • 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.

Chris Abani is the author of Becoming Abigail and Graceland which won the Hemingway/PEN prize and was a finalist for the IMPAC Dublin Award. He was born in Nigeria and has lived in London, New York and Los Angeles. He teaches at the University of California, Riverside.

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