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The Famished Road

The Famished Road

Famished Road: Book 1

Ben Okri

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.

Infinite Riches

Infinite Riches

Famished Road: Book 2

Ben Okri

Azaro is a spirit child. He made a pact with his spirit companions that when he was born he would die at the first opportunity and rejoin them. But after his birth, Azaro broke his pact. His spirit companions have so far sent five spirits to reclaim him, who have failed. Two more are sent and are the most dangerous of all.

In one sense Infinite Riches picks up where Songs of Enchantment left off. Azaro's father has been implicated in the murder of a neighbour and Infinite Riches begins with his arrest and imprisonment. At the same time it introduces a new and enlightening aspect to the story of Nigeria. The writing is rich with allegorical illusion and vivid with magical imagery. This is Ben Okri at his inspiring best.