Song for Night

By: Chris Abani

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Synopsis: &“A devastating portrait of a boy holding onto the shreds of his innocence during a war that deliberately, remorselessly works to yank it away.&”—Los Angeles Times Part Inferno, part Paradise Lost, part Sunjata epic, Song for Night is the story of a West African boy soldier&’s terrifying yet oddly beautiful journey through a nightmare landscape of brutal war in search of his lost platoon. The mute protagonist—his vocal cords cut to lower the risk of detection by the enemy—writes in a ghostly voice about his fellow minesweepers, the things he&’s witnessed, and the things he&’s done, each chapter headed by a line of the sign language these children invented. This &“immersive and dreamlike&” novella (Publishers Weekly, starred review) by a PEN/Hemingway Award winner is unlike anything else written about an African war. &“Not since Jerzy Kosinski&’s The Painted Bird or Agota Kristof&’s Notebook Trilogy has there been such a harrowing novel about what it&’s like to be a young person in a war. That Chris Abani is able to find humanity, mercy, and even, yes, forgiveness, amid such devastation is something of a miracle.&”—Rebecca Brown, author of The End of Youth &“Impressive and fast-paced…narrated with such dry and lucid precision that it brings to mind Babel, Hemingway, McCarthy.&”—Esquire

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