Abani is a fiction writer of mature and bounteous gifts . . . Becoming Abigail is more compressed and interior [than GraceLand], a poetic treatment of terror and loneliness . . . its sharp focus on the devastation of one young woman, has a deeper kind of resonance . . . Abani, himself incarcerated and tortured for his writings and activism in Nigeria in the mid-'80s, writes about the body's capacity for both ecstasy and pain with an honesty and precision rarely encountered in recent fiction . . . This is a powerful, harrowing work, made more so because, while much of the narrative seems to be a vortex of affliction, Abigail's destiny is not inevitable. The small canvas suits Chris Abani.–Sam Lipsyte, New York Times Book Review
