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The narrator, Azaro, is an abiku, a spirit child, who in the Yoruba tradition of Nigeria exists between life and death. He is born into a world of poverty, ignorance and injustice, but Azaro awakens 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. 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.
The Famished Road is a masterpiece if one ever existed -- Jay Parini - Boston Sunday Globe
Overwhelming - just buy it for its beauty - New Statesman
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
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
This is a book to generate apostles. People will be moved and, with stars in their eyes, will pass on the word - Time Out
ISBN: 9780099929307
Publication date: 06/02/1992
Publisher: Vintage Classics an imprint of Vintage Publishing
Format: Paperback
| ISBN: | 9780099929307 |
| Publication date: | 6th February 1992 |
| Author: | Ben Okri |
| Publisher: | Vintage Classics an imprint of Vintage Publishing |
| Format: | Paperback |
| Pagination: | 592 pages |
| Genres: | Literary Fiction, |
| Collections: | 40 unmissable magic realist reads - “It’s real-life, but not as we know it”, |
| Categories: | Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945), |
Ben Okri has published many books including The Famished Road, which won the Booker Prize in 1991. His work has been translated into 26 languages and has won numerous international prizes including the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize for Africa, the Paris Review Aga Khan Prize for Fiction, the Chianti Ruffino-Antico Fattore International Literary Prize and the Premio Grinzane Cavour Prize. The recipient of many honorary doctorates, he is a vice-president of the English Centre of International PEN and was presented the Crystal Award by the World Economic Forum for his outstanding contribution to the Arts and cross-cultural understanding in 1995. ...
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