Chris Abani

Chris Abani is a great writer. This book shows his skill in parts only, unfortunately. He creates interesting characters and puts them into a disturbing but convincing setting. The plot, however, is just not that great a story. The way he lets his characters talk to each other is partly boring, partly ennoying, especially the detective's uncreative overuse of the word "fuck" - don't get me wrong, I love rude language being employed, but it has to be creative, witty, convincing, something... 

To me it also seems that Abani let's his characters dwell too much on the past, giving them no space to breathe in the present of the story. Maybe this could have been fixed with a much longer novel, as Abani is, in a way, very ambitious, relating stories from all over the world, especially however South Africa and Las Vegas (and I'm sorry, Adichie, for putting a country and a city in a list on the same level, but in this case it's correct).

I really liked the fact that Abani chose here not to write about his original home country Nigeria at all, which is what made me read this book. (Again, I love Nigerian literature, it's just interesting to see what else he could write about.) Sadly, it is just not that great this time.