Genre Fiction
![Ben Okri - [object Object] author](https://res.cloudinary.com/readsomnia/image/upload/authors/a_B000APOGGE.jpg)
The Famished Road
In the decade since it won the Booker Prize, Ben Okri's Famished Road has become a classic. Like Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children or Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, it combines brilliant narrative technique with a fresh vision to create an essential work of world literature.
The narrator, Azaro, is an abiku, a spirit child, who in the Yoruba tradition of Nigeria exists between life and death. The life he foresees for himself and the tale he tells is full of sadness and tragedy, but inexplicably he is born with a smile on his face. Nearly called back to the land of the dead, he is resurrected. But in their efforts to save their child, Azaro's loving parents are made destitute. The tension between the land of the living, with its violence and political struggles, and the temptations of the carefree kingdom of the spirits propels this latter-day Lazarus's story.
The narrator, Azaro, is an abiku, a spirit child, who in the Yoruba tradition of Nigeria exists between life and death. The life he foresees for himself and the tale he tells is full of sadness and tragedy, but inexplicably he is born with a smile on his face. Nearly called back to the land of the dead, he is resurrected. But in their efforts to save their child, Azaro's loving parents are made destitute. The tension between the land of the living, with its violence and political struggles, and the temptations of the carefree kingdom of the spirits propels this latter-day Lazarus's story.
Editorial Reviews
from the INTRODUCTION by Vanessa Guignery
‘I felt on the edge of reality.' These are the words uttered by the narrator of The Famished Road as he recalls his venturing to a location that looked like ‘a strange fairyland in the real world'. The sentence perfectly encapsulates the ambivalent and fragile position of a child whose wanderings take him and the readers of Okri's third novel to a multiplicity of places set in the real or the supernatural realm, or a mixture of both. A child of miracles, who knows no boundaries and observes what surrounds him with eyes wide open, Azaro is our very special guide into Okri's
enchanting and terrifying worlds.
In 1991, the publication of The Famished Road marked the emergence of a unique literary voice, that of a writer who was born in 1959 in Minna, a railway town in central Nigeria, nineteen months before his country's independence, lived in London between the ages of one-and-a-half and seven, reluctantly travelled back to Nigeria with his parents and siblings in 1966, and eventually decided to settle in Great Britain at the age of nineteen. While the violence of the Nigeria–Biafra war of 1967–70 greatly affected the young boy, life in Lagos sparked his imagination, teaching him that ‘there was no one world-view, but as many worlds as there are ways of seeing'. As a teenager, he closely observed his father practising law and taking up the cases of destitute people, which led him to develop a fascination for human beings and more particularly the voiceless and unheard victims of social inequalities. In 1978, he left Nigeria for London, which he considered the home of literature, and two years later published his first novel, Flowers and Shadows, in the Longman ‘Drumbeat' series, a showcase for recent African writing. This was followed by The Landscapes Within in 1981 and two collections of short stories (Incidents at the Shrine in 1986 and Stars of the New Curfew in 1988), which prompted Chinua Achebe to name Okri as one of the new generation of African writers ‘who hold a promise of becoming really major'. The promise was fulfilled with The Famished Road which won the Booker Prize, making Okri, at the time, the youngest recipient and first black African writer to receive the award. Three decades after winning the prestigious prize, Okri, for whom writing is an Arcadia, declared that ‘the flame and the hunger and the dreams' were still there.
The Famished Road, Okri noted, was the outcome of a decade of experimentation with form, tone and tincture, in order to find the elixir that would enable him to create the imaginary world he had in mind. This implied, on the part of the author, a Blakean cleansing of the doors of perception to see, hear, smell, ta...
‘I felt on the edge of reality.' These are the words uttered by the narrator of The Famished Road as he recalls his venturing to a location that looked like ‘a strange fairyland in the real world'. The sentence perfectly encapsulates the ambivalent and fragile position of a child whose wanderings take him and the readers of Okri's third novel to a multiplicity of places set in the real or the supernatural realm, or a mixture of both. A child of miracles, who knows no boundaries and observes what surrounds him with eyes wide open, Azaro is our very special guide into Okri's
enchanting and terrifying worlds.
In 1991, the publication of The Famished Road marked the emergence of a unique literary voice, that of a writer who was born in 1959 in Minna, a railway town in central Nigeria, nineteen months before his country's independence, lived in London between the ages of one-and-a-half and seven, reluctantly travelled back to Nigeria with his parents and siblings in 1966, and eventually decided to settle in Great Britain at the age of nineteen. While the violence of the Nigeria–Biafra war of 1967–70 greatly affected the young boy, life in Lagos sparked his imagination, teaching him that ‘there was no one world-view, but as many worlds as there are ways of seeing'. As a teenager, he closely observed his father practising law and taking up the cases of destitute people, which led him to develop a fascination for human beings and more particularly the voiceless and unheard victims of social inequalities. In 1978, he left Nigeria for London, which he considered the home of literature, and two years later published his first novel, Flowers and Shadows, in the Longman ‘Drumbeat' series, a showcase for recent African writing. This was followed by The Landscapes Within in 1981 and two collections of short stories (Incidents at the Shrine in 1986 and Stars of the New Curfew in 1988), which prompted Chinua Achebe to name Okri as one of the new generation of African writers ‘who hold a promise of becoming really major'. The promise was fulfilled with The Famished Road which won the Booker Prize, making Okri, at the time, the youngest recipient and first black African writer to receive the award. Three decades after winning the prestigious prize, Okri, for whom writing is an Arcadia, declared that ‘the flame and the hunger and the dreams' were still there.
The Famished Road, Okri noted, was the outcome of a decade of experimentation with form, tone and tincture, in order to find the elixir that would enable him to create the imaginary world he had in mind. This implied, on the part of the author, a Blakean cleansing of the doors of perception to see, hear, smell, ta...
Readers Top Reviews
RACHEL M
I am a big reader. In three book clubs a month and fit in a few additional books of my own choosing. I am not daunted by a 600 page novel and I very seldom give up on a book. However, Okri has completely defeated me. I have given up after just 100 pages - life really is too short for me to bother reading this book. The magic realism is totally over the top and the plot is impossible to follow. It's hard to care about any of the characters. I'm astonished that this is the first part of a trilogy. How can anyone have the energy to read three novels like this one?!
Jim Bowenamnesiacand
I’m a fan of biographies, and some genre fiction. This isn’t genre fiction. If it is, the closest genre is magical realism. Consequently, I’m not sure I liked this book. This book follows what happens to a poor African family from an un-named (probably) British colony, in the run up to independence. To add another strand to the mix, the son (and only child, is an ability (or sprite), who can see beyond the human realm (which is where the magical part of the magical realism comes in). I’m not going to lie. I found the story dull. I really couldn’t get invested in the characters. I finished it, but damn it was hard work.
Leitir
This is a book that will baffle you on many occasions, and may drive you to reconsider your decision to purchase it and read it in the first place. Although this is a novel, it reads as a series of concentric and chaotic spirals that bleed in and out between prose and poetry. If this is about all the roads of sphericality that weave in and out of the famished road where we are afraid to be ourselves, then it surely leaves you in a state of suspended humility where you look back over your own road to date - and wonder - where and how does my Famished Road connect with those of everyone else?
Business book loverK
I really wanted to like this book, and kept slogging on. But while the writing was very good, and the main character compelling, the story line just didn't seem to be going anywhere. I gave up after about 200 pages, having simply lost interest to know any more of the story.
Short Excerpt Teaser
from the INTRODUCTION by Vanessa Guignery
‘I felt on the edge of reality.' These are the words uttered by the narrator of The Famished Road as he recalls his venturing to a location that looked like ‘a strange fairyland in the real world'. The sentence perfectly encapsulates the ambivalent and fragile position of a child whose wanderings take him and the readers of Okri's third novel to a multiplicity of places set in the real or the supernatural realm, or a mixture of both. A child of miracles, who knows no boundaries and observes what surrounds him with eyes wide open, Azaro is our very special guide into Okri's
enchanting and terrifying worlds.
In 1991, the publication of The Famished Road marked the emergence of a unique literary voice, that of a writer who was born in 1959 in Minna, a railway town in central Nigeria, nineteen months before his country's independence, lived in London between the ages of one-and-a-half and seven, reluctantly travelled back to Nigeria with his parents and siblings in 1966, and eventually decided to settle in Great Britain at the age of nineteen. While the violence of the Nigeria–Biafra war of 1967–70 greatly affected the young boy, life in Lagos sparked his imagination, teaching him that ‘there was no one world-view, but as many worlds as there are ways of seeing'. As a teenager, he closely observed his father practising law and taking up the cases of destitute people, which led him to develop a fascination for human beings and more particularly the voiceless and unheard victims of social inequalities. In 1978, he left Nigeria for London, which he considered the home of literature, and two years later published his first novel, Flowers and Shadows, in the Longman ‘Drumbeat' series, a showcase for recent African writing. This was followed by The Landscapes Within in 1981 and two collections of short stories (Incidents at the Shrine in 1986 and Stars of the New Curfew in 1988), which prompted Chinua Achebe to name Okri as one of the new generation of African writers ‘who hold a promise of becoming really major'. The promise was fulfilled with The Famished Road which won the Booker Prize, making Okri, at the time, the youngest recipient and first black African writer to receive the award. Three decades after winning the prestigious prize, Okri, for whom writing is an Arcadia, declared that ‘the flame and the hunger and the dreams' were still there.
The Famished Road, Okri noted, was the outcome of a decade of experimentation with form, tone and tincture, in order to find the elixir that would enable him to create the imaginary world he had in mind. This implied, on the part of the author, a Blakean cleansing of the doors of perception to see, hear, smell, taste and touch the world differently. The novel invites readers to do likewise, to open their senses and minds, to look at and for what is not directly visible, ‘not the things we s[ee], but the things in between, the myths in between, the tone in between', to quote Okri. When a character announces: ‘We must look at the world with new eyes', he is echoing what Okri wrote in several poems, short stories and essays, and this new insight pertains to both the visible and the invisible. The reader is therefore encouraged to let go of previous assumptions, entrenched reading habits and Western binary conceptions which separate the living and the dead, the real and the supernatural. Instead, The Famished Road privileges circulation, the free flow of ideas, sensations, stories and worlds without boundaries. This implies that, in accordance with West African modes of being and perceiving, the spirits and the dead are part of the everyday environment of the living, making it possible for them all to eat at the same table and for a character of the compound to fight with the ghost of a deceased boxer. Okri recalls that his own childhood was ‘populated with spirits, ghosts, deaths, war, hunger, magic, transformations, sorceries', and his awareness of an animist conception of the world led him to have ‘a humble and magical relationship with reality'.
Just as Okri is ‘a crossroads person, a child of intersection' between Africa and Europe, The Famished Road is a sea of stories deriving from West African mythology, European traditions and Eastern philosophies, which mix and intertwine with the author's own creations. In addition to the enigmatic stories his mother used to tell him and left him puzzling over for years afterwards, and the philosophical books, Greek and Roman myths, and Western classics his father liked so much, Okri let his mind resonate with many realities while writing the novel: ‘the realities of Africa, but also the literary realities...
‘I felt on the edge of reality.' These are the words uttered by the narrator of The Famished Road as he recalls his venturing to a location that looked like ‘a strange fairyland in the real world'. The sentence perfectly encapsulates the ambivalent and fragile position of a child whose wanderings take him and the readers of Okri's third novel to a multiplicity of places set in the real or the supernatural realm, or a mixture of both. A child of miracles, who knows no boundaries and observes what surrounds him with eyes wide open, Azaro is our very special guide into Okri's
enchanting and terrifying worlds.
In 1991, the publication of The Famished Road marked the emergence of a unique literary voice, that of a writer who was born in 1959 in Minna, a railway town in central Nigeria, nineteen months before his country's independence, lived in London between the ages of one-and-a-half and seven, reluctantly travelled back to Nigeria with his parents and siblings in 1966, and eventually decided to settle in Great Britain at the age of nineteen. While the violence of the Nigeria–Biafra war of 1967–70 greatly affected the young boy, life in Lagos sparked his imagination, teaching him that ‘there was no one world-view, but as many worlds as there are ways of seeing'. As a teenager, he closely observed his father practising law and taking up the cases of destitute people, which led him to develop a fascination for human beings and more particularly the voiceless and unheard victims of social inequalities. In 1978, he left Nigeria for London, which he considered the home of literature, and two years later published his first novel, Flowers and Shadows, in the Longman ‘Drumbeat' series, a showcase for recent African writing. This was followed by The Landscapes Within in 1981 and two collections of short stories (Incidents at the Shrine in 1986 and Stars of the New Curfew in 1988), which prompted Chinua Achebe to name Okri as one of the new generation of African writers ‘who hold a promise of becoming really major'. The promise was fulfilled with The Famished Road which won the Booker Prize, making Okri, at the time, the youngest recipient and first black African writer to receive the award. Three decades after winning the prestigious prize, Okri, for whom writing is an Arcadia, declared that ‘the flame and the hunger and the dreams' were still there.
The Famished Road, Okri noted, was the outcome of a decade of experimentation with form, tone and tincture, in order to find the elixir that would enable him to create the imaginary world he had in mind. This implied, on the part of the author, a Blakean cleansing of the doors of perception to see, hear, smell, taste and touch the world differently. The novel invites readers to do likewise, to open their senses and minds, to look at and for what is not directly visible, ‘not the things we s[ee], but the things in between, the myths in between, the tone in between', to quote Okri. When a character announces: ‘We must look at the world with new eyes', he is echoing what Okri wrote in several poems, short stories and essays, and this new insight pertains to both the visible and the invisible. The reader is therefore encouraged to let go of previous assumptions, entrenched reading habits and Western binary conceptions which separate the living and the dead, the real and the supernatural. Instead, The Famished Road privileges circulation, the free flow of ideas, sensations, stories and worlds without boundaries. This implies that, in accordance with West African modes of being and perceiving, the spirits and the dead are part of the everyday environment of the living, making it possible for them all to eat at the same table and for a character of the compound to fight with the ghost of a deceased boxer. Okri recalls that his own childhood was ‘populated with spirits, ghosts, deaths, war, hunger, magic, transformations, sorceries', and his awareness of an animist conception of the world led him to have ‘a humble and magical relationship with reality'.
Just as Okri is ‘a crossroads person, a child of intersection' between Africa and Europe, The Famished Road is a sea of stories deriving from West African mythology, European traditions and Eastern philosophies, which mix and intertwine with the author's own creations. In addition to the enigmatic stories his mother used to tell him and left him puzzling over for years afterwards, and the philosophical books, Greek and Roman myths, and Western classics his father liked so much, Okri let his mind resonate with many realities while writing the novel: ‘the realities of Africa, but also the literary realities...
