Kalakuta Republic by Chris Abani

Kalakuta Republic Reviews

• 
  Queerromani

  Terrifyingly close to be so far away, like the cat in the biscuit tin at the end. Read this because you have to bear witness. Read this because surviving is art. Read this because you are paler when you leave it.
• 
  Bookish

  
  Chris Abani writes of the suffering and pain, witnessed and endured, during his time as a political prisoner in a Nigerian prison. He was arrested and held multiple times from 1985 when he was 18 years old, then again in 1987, to his last arrest when he was put on death row in 1991.
  Kalakuta Republic is a poetic lens into that hellhole, and its aftermath on the writer in London.
  
  I have not read anything quite like it. Kwame Dawes, author of the collection's introduction, asks a good question - How do you marry craft to convey such a nightmarish reality? I don't have the answer. I kept that question at the back of my mind, intending to refer back to it as I worked my way through the poems but the intensity of the poems themselves meant I was immediately sucked in. Where did that leave me? Oddly enough I didn't feel like a voyeur. I'm glad for that, and I believe that in itself speaks to Abani's craftsmanship and his sensitivity with language. But how do I, as a reader, even through a poem, be a witness to that kind of suffering? And its aftermath on the human body and mind? London, oh frigid London, added its own grime to the story. All in all, strangely beautiful and hypnotic,
  Kalakuta Republic raises uncomfortable questions about humanity and society.
• 
  Stephanie

  I read this book for my Global & Transnational Literature class at the University of Utah.
  
  What a wonderful read! Abani's story packs a powerful punch. His language is both beautifully gentle and necessarily violent. This poetry demands to be read and his story deserves to be known.
• 
  Cassandra

  amzing, stark, poetry from his time in prison. true evidence of the power of words.
• 
  Kasey

  This book is as brutal as it needs to be to represent brutality. Not easy, but then it ought not to be.
• 
  Jeremy Allan

  I read this alongside Nazim Hikmet's prison poetry, and they made for an incredible pairing. Important work.
• 
  Ciana

  Really intense and dark.
• 
  Ching-In

  Even more resonant & gut-wrenching the 2nd time around.
• 
  Isla McKetta

  Incredibly difficult imagery and powerful story, but I've read a lot of Abani's later work and I could see the struggle of newness in this early book.