Song for Night by Chris Abani

Song for Night Reviews

• 
  Trish

  Abani’s work is so shot through with pain that the blessing, when it comes, also sears us. This novella, published in 2007, tells the story of a boy soldier called My Luck. “I have never been a boy. That was stolen from me and I will never be a man—not this way.” Separated from his platoon, he wanders, searching for them while avoiding enemies. He is fifteen. His friends are dead. His family is dead. He punctures the skin on his arm with each new important and personal death, raising bumps that he can feel when the nights are dark.
  
  What makes this work exceptional is the clarity with which Abani describes such a scene, inserting moments of grace when we need it most. There is only observation, not pity. When the platoon commander forces the boy at knifepoint to commit an atrocity, his victim, an old woman, soothes him: "Better the ones like you live." Chapter headings are the signs the boy makes to have conversation after his vocal chords are cut by his platoon leader, to keep him from screaming out when he steps on a landmine. “Silence is a Steady Hand, Palm Flat” and “Mercy is a Palm Turning Out from the Heart.” He has not verbalized for three years.
  
  One cannot help but wonder how the author could spend the hours, weeks, months putting together such a description of misery and not be deeply damaged by it. But Abani in person is warm and funny and perceptive and insightful. Abani’s
  discussion with Walter Mosley on the eve of the publication of another book answers some questions and raises more. He’s seen plenty, in his time in Nigeria, London, and Los Angeles. I wouldn’t be surprised if each of these countries claimed him as their native son.
  
  Abani publishes though
  Akashic Books, a Brooklyn-based publisher. He must have a reason for using this publisher, perhaps something to do with his worldview: put your money where your mouth is. But as a result, we must seek out his work—it doesn’t come washing across our laptops like work promoted by the largest publishers. I urge everyone who has not yet had the opportunity to experience Abani’s work to seek him out. It feels relevatory. I would say to read his breakout bestseller,
  GraceLand, first, but perhaps you should first read this one. It has not gotten enough attention, and is so very worthy.
  
  To Akashic Books, I want to say that you have been given a gift that needs to be shared with the world. There is more you need to be doing with that gift to make sure Abani’s work reaches all of us.
  
  “Rest is a Chin Held in a Palm.”
  
• 
  Yair Ben-Zvi

  I don't feel up to the task of reviewing this book. Maybe not 'up to the task' but rather 'worthy'. The subject matter alone (child soldiers in Africa) is enough to turn away many a seasoned reader, and I must admit that despite my having read a good number of dark and 'heavy' novels (the most immediate and relevant that comes to mind is Kozinski's "The Painted Bird which one of the review blurbs adroitly points out) I wasn't quite prepared for this.
  
  Coming from a secular and very western cultural mindset, the back cover of this book broke the knees of my senses of comfort and security. And the opening lines and prefatory descriptions of protagonist 'My Luck' and his world similarly cut me down and bludgeoned me into something else, something ready to at least be told about the horrors of this setting.
  
  And horrible it all is. Going into this book please bear in mind that very little in the way of taboo is left untouched or unmentioned. The atrocities of war, the ease of violating any and all inherent morality by way of 'just following orders' or simply abandoning oneself to the bacchanalian insanity of wartime savagery (rape, brutalizing, cannibalization) are put on full display in sparse un-ornamented prose that lays bare the true hell this all is.
  
  Very much in keeping with the tradition of "The Painted Bird" the entirety of this novella is told from the perspective of a young child, the aforementioned 'My Luck'. But unlike that equally brilliant classic also about the horror of humanity and the incredible potential and ability to survive of that classic, here, the child protagonist is not only victim but perpetrator, literal killer the figuratively killed. An interesting continuation and even revising of something I've come to call 'trauma literature'.
  
  But there's more to this story than just its base depictions of rank barbarism and inhumanity. There's a beauty that intertwines itself with all this madness. Some context: I read this book in one sitting (as part of the syllabus for a seminar in narrative I'm taking towards my masters) and while I read the book I listened, as I often do, to music. The specific music I listened to was Hans Zimmer's beautiful score for the Terrence Malick film 'The Thin Red Line'. With those gorgeously haunting notes, including the Melanasian choir voices towards the end, humming and rising me, crashing me down with each subsequent track, I felt less and less inured and comfortable as I read the story. Less and less I was in a comfortable den in Marina del Rey, California, reading a great book to great music while taking sips from a cool drink as a late fall breeze kicked up the star light dappled waters of the nearby waterway. I was stripped bare with each page, each line, each paragraph of this story, the layers of comfort and stability, of warmth, and hope, and assurance, all peeled back in rapid succession leaving behind a growing and desperately ravenous anxiety that quickened my breathing, softened the sharpness of my vision and made more and more difficult the act of reading.
  
  However, though all this was happening, and the task of reading was difficult, the act of comprehending was not. I absorbed each word, devoured each word like a gift of water in an arid desert. 'My Luck's' journey to find his lost unit of land mine disarming, and eventual (spoiler) apparent crossing over into the realm of the dead, a realm different from the promised ones of the received wisdom of his imam father and catholic mother, and actually, as depicted, far more ancient, unnerved me in such a way that could only be described as a proxy version of beatification through suffering (if you'll forgive the borrowing of a Catholic term for this Secular Jew's review. There's a beauty in the small moments of humanity depicted that allow My Luck, and by extension we the readers, respite from the horrors around him. Small moments that show that beneath the horrific exteriors of most there might, just might, beat human hearts capable of love, morality, and sustaining life rather than ending it.
  
  Read this book. It's a harrowing and destructive, but ultimately redemptive kind of necessary. This is fiction at its most diamond hard and cuttingly beautiful.
• 
  Cheryl

  This book starts with the alluring line: "What you hear is not my voice." Brilliant. Especially since the book is about a teenage child soldier and mine diffuser who was chosen to work in the mine battlefield because "our light weight would protect us from setting off the deadly mines even when we stepped on them," and whose vocal cords were severed so that "we wouldn't scare each other with our death screams."
  
  The book is ghastly, starting with an orphaned boy alone, in a forest, his girlfriend also recently killed, and he's trying to regroup with his platoon. It gets a bit confusing at times, until 70% in when the clues are really being thrown at you and you realize that there is a haunting twist. Since the main character, My Luck, is alone, the book reads like monolithic blocks of text in most places, and you don't get to learn a lot about other characters ( the rest of the platoon for example--except bits about the leader, John Wayne). Lots of interesting anecdotes, however.
  
  I wanted to read this novel because I thought it would be interesting to hear the sordid details from a child soldier protagonist, yet I had some trouble staying with this character for two reasons:
  
  1. Voice was that of an older man. Sure, he mentions in the beginning that he is older than his age (as he would be in those circumstances), however he is in the middle of a forest and in the height of war, saying things like, "we were not chosen for our manual dexterity." Maybe this young character was a school nerd and highly intelligent before he joined the rebels at age twelve, but some explanation maybe?
  
  2. Sensibility through, say backstory maybe? The entire book centers around a voiceless protagonist, yet the narrative around how he loses his voice is only about a couple of sentences. When My Luck does go into some detail though about his child soldier girlfriend, Ijeoma, and his mother, you get some emotion from the character and some good insight into backstory, yet those were only a couple of paragraphs scattered throughout the book.
  
• 
  Charles Dee Mitchell

  We know the horror stories from African civil wars. We read about rape, mutilations, child soldiers, adolescents forced to kill their friends or face death themselves. When I hear people discuss these things, they often describe them “inhuman.” But isn’t that a dodge? The unbearable truth is that any act performed by human beings falls within the range of human potential.
  
  My Luck is an adolescent soldier in Nigeria. He has seen his father, the local iman, murdered by his neighbors. He mother was raped and murdered by the men who abducted him into the army. He and the other youngsters are used as mine diffusers, since they are so lightweight they can sometimes step on mines with igniting them. The officers in charge of them have also supervised the cutting of their vocal cords, a practical move to prevent their screams from either alerting the enemy or discouraging their comrades.
  
  My Luck awakens after an explosion to find that his team has left him behind. As My Luck searches through the bush, wanders into a village not yet ravaged by war, and follows a river choked with bodies washing downstream, he recounts his prewar life, his training, and his active duty. Those last two sets of experiences are nightmarish parodies of true military service, but the child’s voice remains matter-of-fact, self-reflective, and sensitive both to nature and the bonds he feels with his fellow soldiers. His sole aim it to reunite with them. Abani’s short novel is a tale of human experience and the human spirit in horrific situations.
  
• 
  Raven

  An incredibly harrowing and thought provoking read, that unsettles but ultimately completely immerses the reader in My Luck’s plight. I was moved and transfixed in equal measure, and this stands as one of the most powerful indictments of the futility, and barbarous nature of civil war I have ever read.
• 
  Naz (Read Diverse Books)

  As a reader, I believe one of my duties is to experience the narratives of people from all over the world and to expose myself to the lived experiences of as many cultures as possible. Sometimes, this means I get to witness people’s love, joy, and adventures. Those stories are wonderful and we love to read and be enriched by them. But our world is also full of nightmares and horrors that far too many people live and encounter on a daily basis. We may choose to go about our daily lives not thinking about such unpleasant matters, but turning a blind eye to people’s suffering means we are devaluing that suffering for the sake of preserving our own comfort.
  
  We are bombarded with gruesome headlines and heartbreaking stories every day, so it has become increasingly easier to ignore other people’s plight. We all do this and I am no exception. That is why fiction that is honest and reflective of our world’s complex, flawed, and painful history is so important for society in general.
  
  Continue reading in my blog:
  http://wp.me/p7a9pe-td
  
• 
  Kathrina

  A quick read that lies heavy in the heart. Justifies my love for
  GraceLand, a favorite book from 2004. Abani combines tough truth with lyricism.
• 
  Nima

  آن‌چه می‌شنوی صدای من نیست*
  
  برای آن‌ها که کتاب می‌خوانند، خریدن کتاب یکی از ل��ت‌بخش‌ترین، دردناک‌ترین و البته سخت‌ترین کارهای دنیا است و این سختی از آن‌جایی آب می‌خورد که انتخاب کردن در کنار ظرفیت‌های عظیمش نوعی محدود کردن هم هست. اندیشیدن به انتخاب‌نشده‌ها و نگرانی برا�� حال آن‌ها خواه ناخواه انسان رنجور و محدود شده در دایره‌ی تنگ انتخاب‌ها را غمگین و افسرده می‌کند. این پیچیدگی‌ها، کتاب خریدن را به یکی از شخصی‌ترین وجوه زندگی کسی بدل می‌کند که به قول سلینجر هنوز حساسیت روح کودکانه‌اش را طور کامل از دست نداده است. چنین فردی هنگام مواجهه با هر پیشنهاد خرید کتابی واکنش نشان می‌دهد و گاه این واکنش به شکل عصیانی بروز می‌کند که باعث می‌شود فرد هرگز به سمت خواندن آن کتاب کشیده نشود. نوعی از لجبازی کودکانه!
  با این همه مواردی هم پیش می‌آید که فردِ خسته از رعایت همه چیز، دوست دارد اصولش را زیر پا بگذارد و پیشنهادی را بپذیرد که ما��ند هم‌آغوشی با دلبرکی طناز در اولین شب آشنایی، آغاز یک تجربه‌ی خطرناک، جذاب و دوست داشتنی است که گاهی هم پایان خوبی خواهد داشت. شاید کتاب "نغمه‌ی شبانه" نوشته‌ی کریس ابانی برای شما چنین باشد. دلبری لاغر اندام که یک شب تا صبح در آغوش خود جایتان دهد و شبی بسازد پر از رضایت‌مندی.
  نثر ساده و روان کتاب تناسب خوبی با فرم اثر دارد که تک‌گویی بلند یک پسربچه در بحبوحه‌ی جنگ داخلی نیجریه است. نویسنده -که شاعر نیز هست- حین جستجوی راوی به دنبال جوخه‌اش، با روایتی ساده تصاویری حقیقی از شرارت و رنج و بی‌پناهی انسان در لجنزار متعفن جنگ خلق می‌کند و بی آنکه به ورطه‌ی سانتی‌مانتالیسم بیفتند جایی در ناخودآگاه آدمی، عمیق‌ترین احساسات و عواطف انسانی را درگیر می‌کند.
  مترجم کتاب امیر یداله‌پور و ویراستار آن کاوه اکبری است. کتاب ۱۶۹ صفحه دارد و نشر آگه آن را در قطع پالتویی با جلد نرم و کاغذ سبک منتشر کرده است.
  * از متن کتاب
• 
  Mark

  Beautiful and terrifying.
• 
  Etenwa Manuel

  "What you hear is not my voice. I have not spoken in three years: not since I left boot camp. It has been three years of a senseless war, and though the reasons for it are clear, and though we will continue to fight until we are ordered to stop—and probably for a while after that—none of us can remember the hate that led us here."

  
  
  

  "Nobody explained it at first. Nobody had time; nobody cared; after three years of a civil war nothing is strange anymore; choose the reason that best satisfies you."

  
  
  

  "I have killed many people during the last three years. Half of those were innocent, half of those were unarmed— and some of those killings have been a pleasure. But even with all this, even with the knowledge that there are some sins too big for even God to forgive, every night my sky is still full of stars; a wonderful song for night."

  
  
  

  "If peace ever comes, I hope it makes us wiser."

  
  
  

  "If we are the great innocents in this war, then where did we learn all the evil we practice?"

  
  
  

  "I have never been a boy. That was stolen from me and I will never be a man—not this way."

  
  
  A harrowing and haunting recount of war by a child soldier trained to clear out landmines. This child soldier called 'My Luck' as well as his fellow child soldiers have their vocal chords severed in order to prevent distraction that would arise from screaming on the detonation of unnoticed landmines.
  
  A number of the accompanying activities these child soldiers are forced into doing are mind boggling even for adults let alone children.
  
  Chris Abani describes war in his novella in a way that is so troubling and disturbing that it presents a myriad of questions.
• 
  Robert Burdock

  Song for Night follows the journey of Nigerian boy soldier My Luck as he endeavours to re-attach himself to his platoon, following the unexpected detonation of a mine. The platoon is a special one, one whose job is focused on reconnaissance and mine clearance, and My Luck’s particular role is in the diffusing of mines, a job for which his small stature is particularly suited. My Luck has also been ’adapted’ for mine clearance, having his voice cords severed so he is unable to scream should he be blown up and severely wounded.
  
  Narrated in the first-person by My Luck himself, Song for Night follows the boy soldier as he navigates his way across a war-torn landscape full of danger and horror. Pausing at times to reminisce on his time as a boy soldier, My Luck reveals the abominable acts he's been involved in, and the sights which have scarred his soul forever.
  
  Definitely not recommended for the faint of heat, Song for Night offers a vivid a powerful impression of what it may be like to wander a veritable ‘Hell on Earth’, in an African civil war that’s left little for salvation. There are threads of hope running through the story which keep the reader on the right side of abject despair, but overall a grim story which reveals the abhorrent consequences of war.
  
  At times My Luck's ‘visionary interludes’ can make things slightly confusing at times, but putting this aside Abani presents a truly praiseworthy piece of literature. Read it and you’ll remember it for many years to come. Just be prepared for the shocks.
• 
  Irene

  The women were eating and the smell of roasting meat drove us toward them. "Good evening mothers" we said respectfully. The women paused and cackled, but didn't reply, and why would they since they probably didn't understand our crude sign language. We noted that one woman, not as old as the others, was lying on the ground. She was bleeding from a wound to her head and looked dazed. "May we have some food?" I asked. I was the unranked leader of the group. "We are brave warriors fighting for your freedom." My gestures, pointing to the food and mimicking eating, seemed to be understood as the old woman waved me over for some food.I approached and reached down to the metal brazier with meat roasting on it. I suddenly recoil from the sight of a small arm ending in a tiny hand, and the tiny head still wearing its first down. It only took a minute for the women to calculate the cost of my alarm and revulsion so that even as I reached for my AK-47, they were scattering in flight, not forgetting to first grab onto bits of their gory feast. I emptied a clip into them as my platoon cheered at the snapping of old bones and the sigh of tired flesh even though they didn't yet know why I was killing the women. The woman holding onto the head let goo as she fell and it hit the ground and rolled back toward me. It is that little face, maybe a few months old, that keeps me from rest.
  
  Whoa! Scary stuff in this book here. Not sure if I can continue reading from there...
• 
  Kim

  I have seldom read a more beautifully written story than this. That the content is so harrowing makes the beauty of the prose so much amazing.
  
  This book is about a child soldier in a land-mine clearing unit who gets separated from his platoon. In search of his platoon he crosses the country, visiting both the physical and the emotional effects of war on both himself and the country. As if being 13 and a soldier is not bad enough, the landmine-clearing units have their vocal cords severed so that if they are blown up by a mine their screams will not distract other members of the unit.
  
  This carefully created story carries the reader along, revealing pieces of the protagonist’s story along the way. The horror of war to individuals and countries, the cruelty and destruction is made evident through the kindness and creation that are revealed.
  
  As I have said, a very beautifully crafted book dealing with the least beautiful of occurrences. Outstanding!
  
• 
  Kathleen

  This is a great book.
  
  Chris Abani took me to the world of war, and love and brought me to a place of sad understanding. The story is about a young boy, brought into war as a youngster, to help in locating and defusing mines left to kill anyone in their path. Young boys brought to the 'job' because they don't weigh much (less apt to eat much or to set off the landmine), they'll do what they're told. Then, to make sure they are always quiet... well, you'll have to read it to find out. For me, this book opened up a world of which I was, to say it nicely, ignorant. Fear is an Open Hand Beating over the Heart; Danger is a Deep Silence. These are two of the chapter headings that bring me right to the floor with this young person who has seen death and worse. It's a great book.
• 
  Amphitrite

  I'll give it two stars because I have to address that this is beautifully written and some of the lines will stick with me. But personally, I found this story incredibly triggering and I was forced to read it because it was crucial for three class assignments. At least with the other triggering stories I had to read for this class I could read the wiki and sparknote summary beforehand to prepare myself. This book isn't as well known so I had nothing to really warn me. For those thinking about reading this story please note that there's a detailed r*pe scene and a lot of violence happening to and around a fifteen year old child. Again this is still an excellent read but its not my type of book personally.
• 
  Ayat Al Bloushi

  "I have never been a boy. That was stolen from me and I will never be a man—not this way. I am some kind of a chimera who knows only the dreadful intimacy of killing."
  
  
  an amazing terrifying experience of a child soldier. It really tells what we couldn't imagine..
• 
  Claire

  Astonishingly beautiful. I’m trying to avoid spoilers, so I’ll say this: About halfway through I understood where it was taking me, and the transition between the story I thought it was and the story it is is deftly managed. It tells a story brutal and beautiful and heartbreaking, about war and what it does to us, and about language too: what we can and cannot say. The narrator and his platoon of children’s mine diffusers have had their vocal cords cut, and each chapter opens by describing one of the signs they created to communicate. What words are necessary to communicate when war reduces your life to such stark necessity, to the balance between life and death?
• 
  Stephen Heiner

  This was my second time through Song for Night and I only liked it slightly less than my first reading (as I already knew the conceit which had surprised me the first time). Abani's storytelling is visceral and shocking, and perfectly suited to the terrible subject he is willing to encounter: child soldiers in a pointless war.
  
  This is the story of a child telling us about how his childhood and innocence was taken from him, and desperate attempts he and his comrades make in order to reclaim just a bit of humanity amidst a sea of horrors.
• 
  Sofija

  4.85
• 
  Rana

  خیلی حوصله سر بر بود و یک سوم آخرش رو نخونده رها کردم. فقط عنوان فصل‌ها قشنگ بود.
• 
  Sharon

  Read in one sitting this was a strange haunting tale about a child soldier with a twist at the end I didn't expect.
  
• 
  Snezana

  "čak i pored saznanja da su neki gresi preveliki i da bi ih Bog oprostio, moje nebo je svake noći i dalje puno zvezda, kakva divna pesma noći."
• 
  La_Pire (TheWorstReader)

  DNF 66%
• 
  kelly

  "What you hear is not my voice," begins the fifteen year old child soldier protagonist in Chris Abani's "Song of Night." He has not spoken in three years, ever since he was 12 years old. The main character's human voice, we learn, was surgically severed so that he and his fellow soldiers wouldn't "scare each other with death screams" while completing their grisly job of diffusing land mines.
  
  At the beginning of the book, My Luck (the main character's actual name) wakes up on a land mine after a presumed explosion and immediately sets out to find his platoon. What follows are scenes of the orphaned child walking all alone in a forest, staring at dead bodies and floating among them in the river. He recalls his days in combat, thinking back on happier times with his now-absent family, remembering incidents under the command of "John Wayne," his sadistic war commander, and reflecting on the loss of his girlfriend, also a child soldier. There is a bit of backstory here, but not much. We never learn why or where the war is happening, or how My Luck is recruited into this army in the first place. These details, however, are probably not all that important. The author's main objective here is to offer a harrowing account of war from the eyes of a child. And it is not a nice picture.
  
  I liked this book, but honestly, there was SO much here, packed within only 155 pages that I'd want to see this in a novel form. It's like you read this and get to the end and you're still hungry for dinner and you're left feeling that you've only gotten an appetizer. Ugh.
  
  The writing here is a thing to behold, however. This is a work of sheer beauty.
• 
  Wyatt

  Lately, one can easily walk into Borders and feeling awash in child soldier books--from Along Way Gone, to Dave Eggers, to Beasts of No Nation. Though other authors have walked this line recently, Chris Abani's has put his talent for rich characterization into every step of this book. I don't like the think of this as a child soldier novel. Creating such a genre would make it to easy to be dismissive.
  
  I have yet to read something from Chris Abani that I haven't loved. Though his stories are commonly dark, there's always love within that darkness--usually a complicated, and likely unfamiliar version love--one that asks to be considered.
  
  I am still in the middle of this book, but in a more shallow sense, it suddenly reminds me of The Road, given the lone wanderings in a horrifying country, to include cannibals. Abani can be every bit bleak (and touching) as McCarthy.
• 
  Parisa

  پدربزرگ همیشه می گفت مومن ها مانند بچه های تعلیم ندیده ای هستند که گمان می کنند جوهر حقیقت را ازآن خود کرده اند، تنها به این خاطر که درباره اش سخنی گفته اند.
  
  نغمه های شبانه ...کریس ابانی … امین یدالله پور ...۱۵۶
  
  
  اگر ما بیگناهان این جنگیم، پس این همه شرارت را از کجا یاد گرفتیم؟یاغی های پیش آهنگی را دیده ام که گوش یا انگشت پا یا دست دشمن را قطع کرده اند و به سان یادگار در جعبه ای نگه می دارند. این ها را چه کسی به ما یاد داد؟
  چه کسی به من یاد داد تا با کشتن لذت ببرم، لذت یگانه ای که برایم اوج کامجویی است؟ فرقی نمی کند که چگونه مرگی باشد - گلوله ای که تن را بدرد، گوشت خون آلود که به سرنیزه بچسبد، یا ذراتی که چماقی به هر سو می پاشد - لذتش یکسان است و کافی است که دقیقا روی همان لحظه ، دقیقا روی همان عمل تمرکز کنم.هرگز پسربچه نبوده ام.این را از من دزدیده اند و هرگز هم مرد نخواهم- بدین شکل نه.
  
  نغمه های شبانه ...کریس ابانی … امین یدالله پور... ۱۴۴
• 
  Ian Trupin

  This book does an amazing job of walking the line between waking dream, life and death. I won't say more so as not to ruin the ending.
  
  One thing though, I'm getting annoyed by all the people talking about the setting as some generic "African War". There is no generic African war, just as Africa is not a country. This is fairly clearly set in the Biafran War of 1967-1970. There is a specific context and history to this story and its worth your while to understand that rather than shedding a few (white) tears before refiling this back on your darkest Africa shelf.
  
  Let's resist the Hollywood tropes people, if you can't be bothered I think this book is wasted on you.