“What an audacious debut: a novel that reframes The Odyssey as a journey across Los Angeles during the Watts Riots. Beautiful, hard-edged, challenging, and unexpected, Graffiti Palace recalls the linguistic exuberance of Thomas Pynchon while evoking the surreal landscape of a city under siege. At the same time, it never loses sight of the essential human drama—the desire, despite (or because of) everything that’s happening, to find a passage home.”
—DAVID L. ULIN, author of Sidewalking: Coming to Terms with Los Angeles and editor of Writing Los Angeles: A Literary Anthology
“Reading Graffiti Palace, I half wondered if the Watts Riots had been staged all those years ago just so A. G. Lombardo could write a novel about it. This is a book that’s as crazy and unpredictable as an urban uprising; it’s a phantasmagoric journey, written in precise and haunting prose, through a wounded and defiant city called Los Angeles.”
—HÉCTOR TOBAR, author of The Barbarian Nurseries and Deep Down Dark
“An electrifying new voice in American fiction. A. G. Lombardo’s wildly entertaining debut reimagines the 1965 Watts Riots as an Homeric journey through rioting cops, burning streets, CIA conspiracies and the potentially fatal semiotics of race and oppression in America. We also run into Godzilla, Elijah Muhammad, the greatest taggers in the history of Los Angeles freeway art, and a deadly fortune cookie war. Graffiti Palace is a stunning arrival, easily the most exciting book of the year.”
—EVAN WRIGHT, author of Generation Kill
MORE PRAISE FOR GRAFFITI PALACE:
“A bravura improvisation on The Odyssey. Lombardo channels Thomas Pynchon and Colson Whitehead as his hero contends with surreal and dangerous encounters with the Nation of Islam, voodoo practitioners, a one-eyed drug lord, and Godzilla. An exuberantly cartoonish, incisive, and suspenseful tale of an erupting city”
—DONNA SEAMAN, Booklist
“In his debut novel, Lombardo, who flashes impressive stylistic chops throughout, seems to be aiming for his own jazz-inflected version of a Joycean “night town” ramble infused with history, urban legend, dark comedy, and mythological tropes.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Lombardo’s impressive debut is a retelling of The Odyssey, only this version takes place in 1965’s Watts.”
—DAVID KIPEN, Los Angeles Magazine
Graffiti Palace
It’s August 1965 and Los Angeles is scorching. Americo Monk, a street-haunting aficionado of graffiti, is frantically trying to return home to the makeshift harbor community (assembled from old shipping containers) where he lives with his girlfriend, Karmann. But this is during the Watts Riots, and although his status as a chronicler of all things underground garners him free passage through the territories fiercely controlled by gangs, his trek is nevertheless diverted.
AUTHOR BIO
A. G. Lombardo, a native Angeleno, taught English in Los Angeles public high schools for twenty years. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Echo, and daughter Dominique. Graffiti Palace is his first novel.
MAILING LIST
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CONTACT:
Hill Nadell Literary Agency
UPCOMING EVENTS:
March 22, 7:30 pm:
Skylight Books, Los Angeles: Graffiti Palace book launch and reading with David Ulin.
April 22, 2pm:
Los Angeles Times Festival of Books: USC/ Hoffman Hall. Panel: Fiction: Epics Old & New.
May 23:
The International Forum on the Novel: Lyon, France.