Tiger Work

LoveReading Says

Blending poetry and prose, fiction and essay, realism and magic in his quintessentially brilliant style, Ben Okri’s Tiger Work is a powerful, passionate polemic for change. Global in scope, timeless and timely, the anthology showcases two poems, six works of prose, and three short stories, along with an essay and a letter to the earth.

Love is threaded through many of the pieces, along with loss and a sense of the way humans have broken Earth. There’s a talking river that remembers “a time when your people used to worship me as a goddess”, and a caged songbird that comes to a little boy in a dream and explains that the forest is silent because “people have been treating the animals and birds badly”. Addressed to children, “The Songbird’s Silence” is especially poignant, as the little boy moves from feeling sadness at the silent forest to resolving “to help the forest live again”.

There’s a small note near the start requesting folks to “read slowly”, and that’s certainly what these pieces compel readers to do — Tiger Work is a nourishing book to ponder and be edified by.

Joanne Owen

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