Chris Abani was first arrested in 1985 after a paranoid Nigerian government mistook his first novel, Masters of the Board, about a neo-Nazi takeover of the country, for a blueprint of an actual attempted coup. Abani was released and rearrested several times before being found guilty of treason and sentenced to death. He was eventually released in 1991 and emigrated first to Britain and then to the United States. Kalakuta Republic contains the poems he wrote in prison, and conveys the horrors of life on the inside in a controlled, at times almost laconic tone that only makes the effect more powerful:

Old Warrior

One night
   a week after he arrived
he crawled across the cell

   and shook
    me
    awake.

‘Please call me papa’
   he begged.
‘60 years I have been somebody’s
    papa.
I must have someone to be papa
    to.’

So a few of us called
   him Papa Joe until
    he died.

Saqi Books | Paperback 150 pp. |ISBN: 9780863563225