Winner of the 1991 Booker Prize and the first book in Okri's acclaimed trilogy
Ben Okri has published 8 novels, including The Famished Road, as well as collections of poetry, short stories and essays. His work has been translated into more than twenty languages. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and has been awarded the OBE as well as numerous international prizes, including the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Africa, the Aga Khan Prize for Fiction and the Chianti Rufino-Antico Fattore. He is a Vice-President of the English Centre of International PEN and was presented with a Crystal Award by the World Economic Forum. He was born in Nigeria and lives in London.
Teeming with fevered, apocalyptic visions as well as harrowing scenes of violence and wretched poverty, this mythic novel by Nigerian short-story writer ( Stars of the New Curfew ) and poet Okri won the 1991 Booker Prize. The narrator, Azaro, is a spirit child who maintains his ties to the supernatural world. Possessed by `` boiling hallucinations, '' he can see the invisible, grotesque demons and witches who prey on his family and neighbors in an African ghetto community. For him (and for the reader), the passage from the real to the fantastic world is seamless and constant; many of the characters--the political thugs, grasping landlords and brutal bosses--are as bizarre as the evil spirits who empower them. In a series of vignettes, Azaro chronicles the daily life of his small community: appalling hunger and squalor relieved by bloody riots and rowdy, drunken parties; inhuman working conditions and rat-infested homes. The cyclical nature of history dooms human beings to walk the road of their lives fighting corruption and evil in each generation, fated to repeat the errors of the past without making the ultimate progress that will redeem the world. Okri's magical realism is distinctive; his prose is charged with passion and energy, electrifying in its imagery. The sheer bulk of episodes, many of which are repetitious in their evocation of supernatural phenomena, tends to slow narrative momentum, but they build to a powerful, compassionate vision of modern Africa and the magical heritage of its myths. (June)
This is a book to generate apostles. People will be moved and, with
stars in their eyes, will pass on the word * Time Out *
Okri is incapable of writing a boring sentence. As one startling
image follows the next, The Famished Road begins to read
like an epic poem that happens to touch down just this side of
prose... When I finished the book and went outside, it was as if
all the trees of South London had angels sitting in them -- Linda
Grant * Independent on Sunday *
In a magnificent feat of sustained imaginative writing, Okri spins
a tale that is epic and intimate at the same time. The Famished
Road rekindled my sense of wonder. It made me, at age 50, look
at the world through the wide eyes of a child -- Michael Palin
Overwhelming - just buy it for its beauty * New Statesman *
The Famished Road is a masterpiece if one ever existed --
Jay Parini * Boston Sunday Globe *
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