GraceLand has been well received in the Western literary world. When asked for a book recommendation for The Today Show's January selection, writer Walter Mosley recommended GraceLand. Both authors were featured in a discussion on the show, which helped it gain additional renown.[3]
Publishers Weekly highlighted its two-fold ability to tell the story of Elvis, and the larger issues of poverty and globalization: "Relating how an innocent child grows into a hardened young man, the novel also gives a glimpse into a world foreign to most readers-a brutal Third World country permeated by the excesses and wonders of American popular culture…The book is most powerful when it refrains from polemic and didacticism and simply follows its protagonist on his daily journey through the violent, harsh Nigerian landscape."[4]
An equally positive review came from Booklist, which congratulated Abani by stating: "The novel offers a vibrant picture of an alien yet somehow parallel culture, and while the plot runs off the rails from time to time, the mix of surrealistic horror and cross-cultural humor is irresistible. Abani is a first novelist with a very bright future."[5]
However, other reviews, such as Kirkus Reviews, had a slightly more critical view on the novel, stating: "Unfortunately, the factual background is superior to the author's fictional gifts; the grim story of the Oke family arouses our pity but fails to evoke a more active empathy that would enable readers to see their own yearnings and failures in the rather schematic characters. Worth reading for its searing depiction of modern Africa, but Abani is no Chinua Achebe."[6]
Sophie Harrison from the New York Times Book Review also had some complaints. She heavily criticizes the novel's seemingly extraneous cultural material as chapter headings and the Nigerian recipes scattered throughout. She also comments that "...the horrors of [Elvis' life] are never really assimilated into the book's imaginative structure, and the author's interest in showing us his little-written-about world pulls GraceLand persistently in the direction of nonfiction." Like most other reviewers, however, she ends on an overall positive note, calling it "awkward and original but ultimately worthwhile."[7]
GraceLand has won a host of awards, including the 2005 Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award[8] and Hurston-Wright Legacy Award, was the Silver Medalist for the California Book Award, was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and Commonwealth Writers Prize,[9] and was shortlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award.
