The Famished Road
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3.5 • 11 Ratings
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- £3.99
Publisher Description
Journey between the land of the Living and the spirit world in this magical Booker Prize-winning novel
'So long as we are alive, so long as we feel, so long as we love, everything in us is an energy we can use'
Azaro, is a spirit child, who in many traditions of Nigeria exists between life and death. Born into a difficult world, Azaro awakens with a smile on his face. Despite belonging to a spirit world made of enchantment, where there is no suffering, Azaro chooses to stay in the land of the Living: to feel it, endure it, know it and love it. This is his story.
'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
'This is a book to generate apostles. People will be moved and, with stars in their eyes, will pass on the word' Time Out
'Ben Okri is incapable of writing a boring sentence' Independent on Sunday
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
David Olusoga: "For a novel that has been often described as 'magical realism', The Famished Road has a lot to say about the harsh, concrete realities of modern Africa: poverty, political corruption and the politics of the street. Okri’s prose, which won him the Booker Prize in 1991, has an almost dream-like quality, especially in the first half, as the lead character—the ‘sprit child’ Azaro—encounters figures from both the human world and the world of the spirits, from where he himself has come. Even in the poverty of a slum, Okri finds wonders and magic."
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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.
Customer Reviews
Not my thing
Couldn’t get into it, sorry.