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The Famished Road (The Famished Road trilogy #1)

3.72 of 5 stars 3.72 · rating details · 4,081 ratings · 323 reviews

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 trad...more

Paperback, 512 pages

Published June 1st 1993 by Anchor Books (first published 1991)

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Apr 11, 2013 Kalliope rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: africa, fiction-english, international-lit

Towards the end of the book, in Chapter 12 of Book 7, the author states quite clearly what seems to be his intended message:

The spirit-child is an unwilling adventurer into chaos and sunlight, into the dreams of the living and the dead. Things that are not ready, not willing to be borne or to become, things for which adequate preparations have not been made to sustain their momentous births, things that are not resolved, things bound up with failure and with fear of being, they all keep recurrin...more

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Dec 23, 2011 Kinga rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book almost broke me and ate me.

I went to bed after reading the first twenty pages of it and I dreamt about chasing an antelope with a broken horn which jumped out the window. I, in turn, was being chased by a wild boar covered in blood which spoke in a human voice. There was also a flying carpet.

I don't really like magical realism but this book didn't care. I was gonna have it whether I liked it or not. It swept me away before I knew it. By the end of it I would read about a man who slept...more This book almost broke me and ate me.

I went to bed after reading the first twenty pages of it and I dreamt about chasing an antelope with a broken horn which jumped out the window. I, in turn, was being chased by a wild boar covered in blood which spoke in a human voice. There was also a flying carpet.

I don't really like magical realism but this book didn't care. I was gonna have it whether I liked it or not. It swept me away before I knew it. By the end of it I would read about a man who slept for two months and not bat an eye. Only a little later I would think: wait a minute, people can't sleep for two months straight! That's not possible, they have to eat and stuff!

As any other book of magical realism "The Famished Road" is elliptical. The characters go through a never-ending cycles of death and rebirth. It suits so well the literature of Africa and Latin America because it represents the hopelessness and desperation of poverty and mirrors the situation of these fairly new countries that always seem to be going back to square one. It's a never-ending struggle of the same eternal forces that always seems to end in a draw.

This is really the story that Azaro, the so called 'spirit child' (what a cheesy name really!) tells us. He is a child who doesn't want to stay on this Earth and longs for death. He constantly fights the desire to join his companions from the spirit world. It's only the love of his mother that keeps him fighting back this temptation. It takes him about 500 pages to finally develop a hunger for life even in this miserable postcolonial reality.

The book is full of symbolism as you would expect but there is also a lot of humour, some political satire and vibrant characters like the powerful bar owner Madame Koto.

It's beautifully written and it is hypnotic. It is also heart-breaking and devastating. And yes, it could be easily at least 200 pages shorter, but I enjoyed reading it even if it left me drained and hallucinating. I wanted it to end and I didn't want it to end.

I realise it is a love it or hate it kind of book and frankly I don't mind if you hate it. I feel very possessive and jealous about it.

The only reason I haven't given it five stars is because I don't see myself rereading it. It would probably drive me mad.(less)

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Sep 07, 2012 William rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: africa, 20-ce, fiction

An oneiric epic. Phantasmagoria in the bush. One is reminded of Achebe's Things Fall Apart in which the Yoruba myth of the abiku, or spirit child, is so much more darkly rendered. The Famished Road is not so dark a book. It is scary in its way, surely, loaded as it is with its cast of frighteners, but it can also be oddly reassuring in its vivid depiction of the afterlife. Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens, yes, but it is also beautiful, in a Daliesque way, without strife and full of...more An oneiric epic. Phantasmagoria in the bush. One is reminded of Achebe's Things Fall Apart in which the Yoruba myth of the abiku, or spirit child, is so much more darkly rendered. The Famished Road is not so dark a book. It is scary in its way, surely, loaded as it is with its cast of frighteners, but it can also be oddly reassuring in its vivid depiction of the afterlife. Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens, yes, but it is also beautiful, in a Daliesque way, without strife and full of high joy.

Azaro, short for Lazarus, another survivor of the grave, and his Mum and Dad, live in an unnamed city in a modern African state. The community is ensnared in grinding poverty. There has been virtually no education among those in the community. The residents are without the richness of language that might allow them to talk through their problems. Instead there is much acting out, violence, aggression, theft.

Azaro travels back and forth between the spirit world and reality. There is never any doubt in the reader’s mind as to which is which. There might be moments of periodic ambiguity, but Okri always cures these before too long. Is our narrator reliable? Do we believe him? No matter the flights of fancy, his dalliance with the spirit world, we believe that he believes what he experiences is real. Is he self deluded? Maybe. Or perhaps just subject to a too vivid imagination? That is suggested in the last line.

The story is set on the cusp of independence for an African nation like Nigeria, which historically occurred in 1960. The machinations of the newly formed parties are nothing short of criminal. Many, including Mum, a peripatetic seller of common household items, are intimidated to vote the “right way” by the Party of the Rich. Dad, who must work carrying loads on his head (apparently cheaper than forklifts?) grows simultaneously more compassionate and more insane. In desperation he goes from role to role as a means of finding sustenance for his family. First he is a menial worker, then a boxer, a fine one, fighting opponents whose imperviousness depends upon bad magic. Then he is a politician embracing a clan of beggars he cannot support.

There is the local ambitious barkeep, Madame Koto, whose political involvement gradually improves both her fortunes and the decadent offerings she is able to provide her increasingly well-heeled clientele. Her bar becomes an intersection between the living an the dead. She becomes massive, corrupt, physically grotesque. The narrative is sustained almost entirely by way of action. Every sentence describes. We see vividly. The novel has a marvelous cohesion. Is it too long? I think it is. One wishes Okri could have done the task in 400, or even 375 pages, but that was not to be.

Please don't take the bait and read The Famished Road solely as an allegory on the newly independent state of Nigeria. To do so will be to diminish a wildly imaginative and astonishing book to the level of mere parable. The narrative works on many levels. I enjoyed it most when reading it as a creative take on the enabling spiritual myths of a people. It provides insight into another world, the primary objective of all great fiction. Highly recommended.(less)

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May 04, 2009 Justin Mitchell rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Omigod, this came completely out of left field. I read Okri´s debut, Flowers and Shadows, a heartbreaking family chronicle, but nothing prepared me for this. This book is not like anything else I have ever read. I never had the slightest notion where things were going, I had to keep asking myself what was going on, but I was nevertheless transfixed. Imagine reading a David Lynch movie taking place in Africa with a script by Karl Marx and you´ve got some idea of what you´re in for. It starts righ...more

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Mar 07, 2013 Delvy Tutupary rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: man-booker-prize, novel-asing

Menurut saya buku ini memiliki kualitas terjemahan yg bagus, maksud si pengarang dan daya imajinatifnya mampu di transfer dgn begitu baik oleh penerjemah dgn menggunakan kata2 yg pas dan kaya, dlm beberapa bagian penerjemah menggunakan kata2 bahasa indonesia yg tdk lazim (dan ini usaha yg bagus) sehingga berkali2 saya terpaksa membuka kembali KBBI. Masalah penggunaan kata yg "tdk seharusnya", tidak jadi masalah, karena kata2 tersebut mmg sudah sangat akrab dlm kehidupan kita sehari2. Ben Okri dl...more

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Aug 16, 2012 Gijs rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, novels, english, africa, 20th-century, 20th-century-1990s, booker-prize-winner

Vreemde, magisch-realistische roman waarvan de verteller, Azaro, een zgn. “spirit-child” is, een geest die als mens geboren wordt, maar contact blijft houden met de eeuwige geestenwereld.

Dit gegeven leidt tot vreemde, hallucinoire en delerische passages, waarin Azaro van de echte wereld weggelokt wordt naar die van de geesten, die bevolkt wordt door rare wezens, hybrides van mensen en dieren en rare landschappen. Niet alleen Azaro staat in contact met deze wereld, ook magiërs en andere personage...more

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Aug 17, 2007 Martha rated it 1 of 5 stars Recommends it for: my worst enemy

Shelves: waste-of-a-perfectly-good-tree

Oh my dear lord, how I hated "The Famished Road". Friends don't let friends read this book. I only finished it because I was trekking in Nepal with no alternative English-language book for miles upon miles. In my personal hell, this is the only book in the library.

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Sep 22, 2009 Karson rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book was really big! Little words and about 500 pages. The writer has a really unique style. I am sure there is a term for it, but basically he mixes the magical with the practical. One sentence a boy is walking to the store, and the next he is encountering three yellow glowing witches, an old herbalist, a wizard's apprentice and a centaur in a magical forrest. Yeah, it's kind of like that. My description might repel or attract you to the story, but there is a lot more going on in this book...more

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Mar 24, 2008 Siri rated it 3 of 5 stars

I CAN'T HANDLE THIS BOOK! It's addicting and annoying and takes itself too seriously and colorful and tense and weird and jumpy and cool. WHAT DO I DO?! I am a bit over halfway and can't quite stop reading it but it keeps me up all night (not turning pages, but anxious after I put it down...). It's also ridonculously long, so I can't just suck it up and finish it in a couple nights...

ok i think i have offically given up on it. It had so much potential to be good but all of the acid trip writing...more

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Aug 09, 2011 Gordon rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

This book is achingly evocative of a time and place... and of very real dreams. At the same time it is just too outlandish to take in. For another kind of reader, it might well be a gem, but not me. On the one hand, I was drawn into Azaro's day to day life, and the lives of his father and mother and the increasingly monstrous Madame Koto: the gleaming white stones, the crush of the market, the nod of the lizard's head - all stands out vividly. The minor characters, too, are utterly convincing, c...more

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Jan 01, 2009 Mike rated it 3 of 5 stars

A very strange book. I found the first two thirds dull, densely dreamlike, and impenetrable. Then something caught fire, and the last third was absolutely riveting. In the final chapters, the camera pulls back and you realize that the book isn't just about a boy who is struggling to be "born"; it's about all of post-colonial Africa, struggling repeatedly to be born, and too often falling back into death. It needs to be read with Zimbabwe, or Liberia, or Sierra Leone, or Angola, or Uganda, or the...more

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Dec 16, 2008 Inge rated it 2 of 5 stars

Too bloody ruddy many words

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Jul 12, 2012 Punit Soni rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: african, contemporay

In the beginning there was a river. The river became a road and the road branched out to the whole world. And because the road was once a river it was always hungry.
The mythical real world of the tragedy that is Nigeria, submerged in poverty, pain and hunger. Hunger which threatens to swallow life, and life which threatens to swallow everything. If there was a river, and it became the road and the road was life itself, then since the road is a river, it is hungry and hence the famished road. Ben...more

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Nov 27, 2011 Richard Bon rated it 5 of 5 stars

I have a question, after finishing this book: how can I go back to living my daily work life? This masterpiece of imagery and language made me question everything about the capitalist machine.

The story of the boy Azaro and his family's struggle in a poor neighborhood somewhere in Nigeria shuttles readers between the real world and the spirit world and interweaves the two in any given scene. The boy's father (who transforms himself into a mystically powered boxer named "Black Tyger") and mother t...more I have a question, after finishing this book: how can I go back to living my daily work life? This masterpiece of imagery and language made me question everything about the capitalist machine.

The story of the boy Azaro and his family's struggle in a poor neighborhood somewhere in Nigeria shuttles readers between the real world and the spirit world and interweaves the two in any given scene. The boy's father (who transforms himself into a mystically powered boxer named "Black Tyger") and mother teach him through fables not unlike the boy's own travel among people and spirits. They're poor, but principled. The father resists all attempts to make him compromise his ideals, however drunk he may get or unfair he may act. The mother works doggedly and somehow always finds the time and energy to cook and clean for her husband and son. The boy defies his spirit friends, rejects their constant offers of paradise, and remains with his poor parents to love them and be loved by them and do his best to abide their wishes. It's a story of the strength of family in the face of unstoppable forces pushing against them: landlords and politicians and poor, sometimes parasitic neighbors all around them.

To me, Ben Okri's depiction of the living world anticipates utter chaos and ruin. Azaro's family and perhaps his entire village cannot survive without the help of some major event. His father and mother can hardly keep up with bills well enough to feed their son and themselves. Black Tyger's boxing fame, developed through extreme training and eating habits and whatever aid he receives from the spirit world, seems to be the family's only chance to escape from the daily grind that leaves them physically and emotionally exhausted, and still broke. I can't help but imagine many an American ghetto where people feel trapped, like their only options are to become a superstar athlete or resort to thieving or worse.

Madame Koto, an intriguing character for her secretiveness, strength, and the way the others in the village speculate about her powers and habits, presents readers with another option: the successful small business person, with her popular bar serving drinks, famous pepper soup, and eventually concubines. She essentially betrays her people to rise in wealth and power, supporting the party of the rich while her constituents are all poor. She comes to hate herself and show no mercy for the desperate beggars who steal from her.

My favorite scene is the one in which a "great herbalist" comes to bless Madame Koto's car (she's the only person in the village rich enough to own a car). He begins by speaking of the car as being very safe, then, as he gets drunk, correctly predicts it will become a coffin. In his drunken selfishness, though, he loses all credibility by telling the crowd he can prevent the car from reaching its fate as a coffin if Madame Koto will "give" him one of her concubines. I found this hilarious, the herbalist like a corrupt preacher. He eventually sounds off on how "They" are destroying Africa and that "selfishness is eating up the world." I can only take his "they" to be capitalist aligned politicians who allow the destruction of forests and exploitation of the people. I just love how the herbalist cannot ward off his own selfish desires just as he explains the fate of the selfish world.

I loved this book. I'm not doing justice to the fun of reading Okri's very unique and intelligent style. He may not provide the answers for us in today's living world, but he made me think hard about where we're headed. He made me worry and laugh at the same time.(less)

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Jan 09, 2011 Ric Phillips rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

A magic-realist culturally-specific exercise in childhood memoirs.

Okri's writes crisp to-the-point sentences that never weigh the reader down, and which make this an easy book to read. He combines realism and fantasy with a natural ease, and as a result, the fantastic elements of the story never seem artificial or didactic. And at no point did I feel he was inviting me to 'decode' the fantasy and figure out what it 'really' means. Which is to say there is no indication of parable or symbolism. T...more A magic-realist culturally-specific exercise in childhood memoirs.

Okri's writes crisp to-the-point sentences that never weigh the reader down, and which make this an easy book to read. He combines realism and fantasy with a natural ease, and as a result, the fantastic elements of the story never seem artificial or didactic. And at no point did I feel he was inviting me to 'decode' the fantasy and figure out what it 'really' means. Which is to say there is no indication of parable or symbolism. The narrative is really driven by the realist elements of the setting - poverty, politics, culture - and how these determine the behaviour of the characters.

There is really only one metaphor that matters in this novel - and it's not 'the hunger of roads'. The narrator is a 'spirit child' (Azaro) - children born unwillingly and who die at the earliest opportunity to return to the bliss of the spirit world. But this makes him something of a riddle. We see everything through his eyes, but even after 500 pages his experiences only cohere in terms of the (always passive) extra burden he carries as a result of his sensitivity to the spirit world. He is just an average child making sense of a confusing and apparently capricious world. But his confusion is painfully amplified by his sensitivity to the supernatural forces operating around him. There is no sense at all in the novel that these forces have any plan or objective other than to reclaim Azaro. They are animistic and primal and so provide no 'plot'.

The novel tells the 'story of poverty' very well. And it's always the same story regardless of culture, place or time. The usual suspects are there: The dreamer whose wild quixotic schemes fuelled by frustration, grinding labour and hope end up amplifying the oppressive exhaustion and struggle of those around them. The suffering and hard working people who hold life together with love and humility in awful circumstances. The oppressors (politicians) and opportunists (thugs). And that particular type that always appears in novels set in impoverished places - the canny entrepreneur - the local merchant who understands how to make money and work his or her way up.

In it's depiction of everyday (urban) African life the novel is both wonderful and original. Original to my way of thinking because at no point does it look back to the 'village' to pre-urban tribal life. Far less does it evoke the African pre-colonial past in utopian garden-of-Eden terms. Big African cities have been around for a long time now and generations have grown up in them. I was grateful Okri writes from a point of view that simply accepts this. He doesn't suggest that African city dwellers are any less 'modern' or 'urban' than the rest of the world. Yes, there is no television, or even electricity in their world but they are not displaced hunter-gatherers by any stretch of the imagination.

And Okri's depiction of this urban African world is really quite engaging, rich and detailed, and many times quite moving.

This is a novel that does not resolve itself in plot. There isn't any thing happens to finish the story - it is more that something is understood - and even then not directly.

If you like a novel that paints a very rich detailed picture of an ordinary poor family in what could be one of thousands of poor neighbourhoods in any big sub-Saharan city, and leaves you there until you are thoroughly immersed in its sights, and sounds and smells; in what its inhabitants can see when they look out their windows; and what happens when they meet their neighbours you will enjoy this book.(less)

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Nov 15, 2009 Teresa rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

i am no expert but i think the reigning opinion amongst literary snobs is that magic realism is an embarrassing gimmick. braving the possible negative backlash, i have already put one hundred years of solitude on my favorites shelf. today, i'm going to take another leap of faith and confess that i also loved this one. i read this quite a while ago (in 2006 maybe) but tonight i don't want to sleep so i'm killing the time on goodreads randomly adding things.

i am a real sucker for stories written...more

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Jul 30, 2011 Lester rated it 1 of 5 stars

OK, I must admit the that writing is pretty, very descriptive and the story (which is almost in the background) is compelling. However, after a few chapters the descriptiveness becomes too bizarre and too changeable. I got completely fed up after 10 pages the first time I tried to read it. This time I made it to 180 pages before giving up. I cannot stand this writing anymore and Okri has spoiled it for me. I cannot understand for the life of me why it won the Booker Prize. Maybe because it came...more

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Mar 27, 2009 Shawn rated it 3 of 5 stars

The reviews say things like, "you've never read a novel like this before"; Winner of the Booker Prize, etc. Well, sometimes you want to read a little magical realism, right? Like you are yearning to re-read Cien Años de Solidad by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and I also feel like that sometimes. But I only gave this book three stars because it is 500+ pages of this:
"Mesmerized by the cobalt shadows, the paradoxical ultramarine air, and the silver glances of the dead, I listened to the hard images of...more

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Jul 24, 2009 Kellyreaderofbooks rated it 5 of 5 stars

A young Nigerian boy named Azaro is caught between two worlds: the real world, and the spirit world he came from when he was born. He's in a constant struggle to keep his soul here in the real world, with the spirits trying to get him to join them again in their world. Azaro's real world family lives a hand-to-mouth existence, with his father doing manual labor jobs for very little money, and his mother peddling what cheap goods she can get ahold of. They live in a compound in the ghetto, and ar...more

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Sep 27, 2012 Matt Brady rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A boy sat down to read a book, but when he looked closely, it was not a book, but a person. The person had green skin and roller-skates for eyes. A lizard with a head as big as the moon scuttled over and sniffed the green-skinned person. "What are you looking at?" the person asked the boy. "I thought you were a book," the boy said. "No," the person said, "I am a metaphor or magical realism or some shit. I dunno. But I have roller-skates for eyes, that's pretty cool." The boy shrugs. "You're mum...more

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Jun 04, 2011 Fisheye rated it 3 of 5 stars

I read an excerpt from the first few pages of this book during a literature course, immediately fell in love, and knew I had to read the rest of it. I was so excited when I finally managed to lay my hands on a copy at the library. The prose was lush, evocative, and beautiful. I loved the way the mundanity (which was vivid and never really mundane) was interspersed with brief, surreal episodes. And then, after the first 50 pages or so...

...I got so tired. The richness of the prose started off mag...more

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Oct 11, 2010 Rachel Rueckert rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Anyone

Shelves: africa, favorites

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. This was my first read, and favorite, out of my recent selections from West African authors. The use of magical realism is very fitting, combining the spiritual beliefs with everyday life, very much like Wole Soyinka and Amos Tutuola have done before. The cyclical plot structure also intensified the genre. It felt like a lot was happening but going nowhere fast, reminding me of Yeat’s poem “Things Fall Apart” where “the center cannot hold.” Yet, having lived in Ghana, Africa while reading this b...more This was my first read, and favorite, out of my recent selections from West African authors. The use of magical realism is very fitting, combining the spiritual beliefs with everyday life, very much like Wole Soyinka and Amos Tutuola have done before. The cyclical plot structure also intensified the genre. It felt like a lot was happening but going nowhere fast, reminding me of Yeat’s poem “Things Fall Apart” where “the center cannot hold.” Yet, having lived in Ghana, Africa while reading this book, I had a different experience with it than I think I would have otherwise. While there are countless things to talk about, I want to look at the review on the back cover of my copy from Boston Globe, who said, “that Okri should have wrestled such a book from the miseries of Africa life is all the more astonishing.” That phrase “miseries of Africa life,” is something I want to look at a little closer.

This was the first book I read in the field. Dealing with culture shock, language barriers, a new diet, health issues, and the new scene it sometimes made it look like that phrase had a lot of truth to it. Trying not to be ethnocentric, but the anthropologist in me had troubles romanticizing hungry people and dying children. How do you reconcile with this coming from a Western paradigm? It was in the midst of this struggle that I came across the speech of Azaro’s father to call him back from the spirit world. “We have sorrow here, but we also have celebration. We know the special joys. We have sorrow, but it is the sister of love, and the mother of music” (337).

More than ever did I realize that everyone suffers, no matter where you are in the world. All life is full of suffering. It is the human condition. No one is exempt. In America it is just different. And last I checked no one has cheated death yet.

One other way that I think my experience helped me visualize this story is the compound. How do you explain a compound until you live in one? This is no apartment building or a hut, it is a cement center area where you all come out and mingle—where you are forced to socialize and interact with the neighbors. Everyone is connected. Yes, you have a room, but all the doors lead to this central courtyard. I can only imagine how difficult it would be to be the hated neighbor in one of these homes. Lucky for me, Auntie Faustine, the neighbor who lived in the room next door, was one of my favorite people here. Esther, our landlord, was also a very kind and accompanying person. We all cleaned and cook together. We were a unit. A team. So the politics of this compound with Azaro and his family are a little bit more intimate that we probably experience here at home.

Another thing I liked about this section (well, found interesting at least) was the car crash, and how Madam Koto’s devastation was about the loss of the car and not the injury of the driver. I think that says a lot about what modernization is doing for these people, and it is a sad but accurate reflection of many people that I know back home. It is a tough call. Are electricity and a car causing even more trouble? In this story I would agree yes. In my personal experience, two children died because of these influences. But what about clean running water? A medical facility that can diagnose a pregnant girl as being pregnant instead of having malaria? These things that are supposed to be benefits with modernization, but some are heavily weighted in my mind. Madam Koto, one of the most important characters in my mind, is a good example of what modernization has done to her. She got her wealth, her success, her crowd of friends, but yet somehow she is not happy. Difficult questions, “riddles that only the dead can answer.”

I would recommend this book to anyone no matter how familiar they are with Africa or African literature. It is definitely one of the best books I have ever read.
(less)

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Mar 08, 2009 S added it · review of another edition

Minna, Nigeria 1959-

from Wikipedia entry "Animism"
Sickness is often explained as due to the absence of the soul and means are sometimes taken to lure back the wandering soul.
Dreams are sometimes explained in animist cultures as journeys performed by the sleeper, sometimes as visits paid by other persons, by animals or objects to the sleeper.
Lists of phenomena from the contemplation of which "the savage" was led to believe in animism:
* Trance
* Unconsciousness
* Sickness
* Death
* Clairvoyance
*...more

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Mar 16, 2012 Courtney H. rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites, bookers

As I mentioned in my last review, The Famished Road and The Remains of the Day are why I decided to read all the Bookers, as they were the first two I read, by happenstance and without knowing anything about the prize or even that they were winners, and they both were among the most powerful, beautiful books I had ever read. So when I started reading the Bookers finally – too many years later – I decided to give these books a reread, to see how fickle my love of these books were, several years...more As I mentioned in my last review, The Famished Road and The Remains of the Day are why I decided to read all the Bookers, as they were the first two I read, by happenstance and without knowing anything about the prize or even that they were winners, and they both were among the most powerful, beautiful books I had ever read. So when I started reading the Bookers finally – too many years later – I decided to give these books a reread, to see how fickle my love of these books were, several years later and when pitted against the many other Bookers I’ve read right in a row. I’ve been holding all the Bookers up to these two books and (perhaps unfairly) found many wanting of that spark that I remembered these books having in abundance. I wondered if these books would withstand the pressure of the other Bookers, or if they, too, would appear a little dulled. Neither did. Like The Remains of the Day, The Famished Read needs no introduction or pre-read analysis; it is an incredible journey of a book that should perhaps be embarked on with no prior information, with just that first page and maybe the assurance that the 500 pages are worth it – and that they fly by.
The Famished Road is magical realism as you may not have read before. It is not merely that magic is in the world, but rather multiple worlds – the spirit world, dream worlds, the real world – blend together at the edges, merge and overlap and split apart, happen and can be lived in simultaneously. Azaro, the main character, is an abiku, a spirit child who dies in childhood to return to the spirits. Azaro has opted to turn his back on his spirit brethren but cannot cut ties with them, so he walks in both worlds; sometimes haunted, sometimes pulled into the spirit world, sometimes using the spirit world to translate the disfigurement of his own world, a ghetto surviving the chaos and violence of the first elections seasons in post-colonial Nigeria as it transitioned to independence.
Okri excels at giving rich, detailed descriptions at a breakneck pace. He locks onto those few characteristics that give life and shape to the entire figure -- be it a person or a spirit -- an event, a place, or a moment. It is how he manages to create massive, complicated scenes as he whirls you through a riot and a jaunt into a spirit realm in a matter of seconds (or a paragraph). He also has a remarkable ability to make the grotesque or bizarre merge with more average people or places.
The Famished Road is a sign of how varied literature is and can be. Because if you read my review of Schindler's Ark, I there praise Keneally's straightforward prose in writing the horrific violence of the work camps and the ghettos. In that book, it is the matter-of-fact approach that makes those images so striking and disturbing. Here, it is the opposite -- but no less striking. Here, Okri persuades us to follow him into the spirit world; he surrounds us with images of spirits, magic, other realms, and then suddenly drops us into a riot, or the violence of a colonial police state, or the wars waged against and by the disenfranchised, impoverished citizens of a Nigerian ghetto, or the degredation of the environment around the city. The transitions are shocking, and sometimes (often) incomplete; the edges of post-independence violence blur with the edges of this magic spirit world that Okri has constructed, in which at least two worlds overlap and intersect. Okri is determined not to do the heavy lifting for us; it is up to us to parse apart the two worlds, to recognize when he has brought us into the middle of a riot, or to recognize when the spirit world is real, when it is a symbol of the violence and poverty in with Azaro lives out his daily life; and when it merely bleeds into the "real" world. It is like magical realism on crack. And it makes the colonial story here, if harder to identify at times, just as potent and striking as the story that Keneally tells. Though thinking back, in some ways they are not so different, because while Okri's violence is blended with a spirit world, and his prose more lyrical, he is no less matter of fact about the violence, the riots, the police brutality, than Keneally is.
If The Remains of the Day is a quiet book, this is a cacophonous one; but just as complex characters and layers of emotion emerged from the quiet, here they emerge from the noise. Nothing in this book has a single meaning. Everything is love and violence. Every moment crackles with frenetic energy, even as the characters sleep. Just as every moment is fantastical and filled with spirits, each moment is also filled with want and hunger and impoverishment – the very opposite of wonderment. It is at once massive (the story about the rise of local politicians and the power of national parties) and small (the story of a troubled set of parents to an abiku who has decided to stay, the photographer whose life changes when a photograph gets published). It is Nigeria and it is larger than Nigeria. But like The Remains of Day, I cannot quite put my finger on why it is such a beautiful, frenetic book, and why I love it so much. It simply has a spark or quality I can’t quite identify, that makes it special, not merely just another good book but one that stays with you, haunts you, makes you think that you see haunted beggars in the faces of birds, and spirits in the faces of people in the crowd. The Famished Road stands apart, and in its own well deserved position.
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May 09, 2013 Tim Jones rated it 3 of 5 stars

The Famished Road is the story of Azaro, a child living half in reality and half in the spirit-world, born into a poor family in rural Africa. It describes the family's battles against the hardships of poverty, the corruptions of politics, and the foibles and judgements of a society of people, all from Azaro's waking-dream perspective.

The writing is fantastical, magical, and beautiful. There were moments where the sheer beauty of the prose made me sit back and pause to breath it in, like it migh...more

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Nov 19, 2012 Tonya rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is my book of the year! I absolutely devoured this book. An African tale filled with folklore, sangomas and creatures of a nether world. The story traces the life of Lazarus, a boy gifted with the power to see and engage in the African spirit world. He takes you along a very hungry road that is Nigeria filled with poverty, corruption and disease yet also rich in many other ways. This book was filled with moments where I wonder what on earth was going on only to be dumped firmly back on hars...more

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Feb 15, 2013 Joseph rated it 3 of 5 stars

This book reads like an epic poem, full of colors and creatures and humans appearing magically and with animal traits. It is like being in a fairytale while walking through the muck of reality.

Azaro is a spirit-child who is constantly reborn but dies young. This time around, however, he decides to break his pact with his spirit brethren and stay with his earthly parents in Africa during a rather tumultuous period of independence for the continent. Azaro sees no difference between the strange wa...more

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Feb 18, 2013 Harsha Priolkar rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2013, reading-the-bookers

Aaaaaah! Finally done! I was beginning to think I never would ;) At 574 pages, this is not the longest book I’ve read (LOTR comes immediately to mind :P), but it certainly felt like it! I felt every moment of the 13 days it took me to read...sigh!

The first paragraph had me hooked with its promise of an unusual story and the delectable prose. Okri’s genius and considerable writing talent are obvious from the start and yet after all is read and done (excuse the poor punning, my brains feel rather...more Aaaaaah! Finally done! I was beginning to think I never would ;) At 574 pages, this is not the longest book I’ve read (LOTR comes immediately to mind :P), but it certainly felt like it! I felt every moment of the 13 days it took me to read...sigh!

The first paragraph had me hooked with its promise of an unusual story and the delectable prose. Okri’s genius and considerable writing talent are obvious from the start and yet after all is read and done (excuse the poor punning, my brains feel rather addled at the moment :P), I’m not sure how I feel about the book as a whole. Or rather I know that it’s beautifully written, I feel the story it tells, I can even understand the interminable metaphors (this book is one giant metaphor – a sum of all the innumerable ones that litter the pages) – and yet I feel a little lost at the end of it, as if other than the fact that it speaks in utterly wondrous words, it has nothing new to say. But I’m no expert and I admit that in the last few pages, I did feel like I understood a lot more of the author’s intent.

The story is primarily narrated through Azaro, a ‘spirit-child’, who lives with his parents in what is clearly an African ghetto – a place where the poor ‘live’ if their sorry, tormented existence, can be called that. They often seem weightless in Okri’s prose – blown this way and that by events, both natural and man-made; at the mercy of all manner of evils – human, spiritual, and Godly. Their superstitions, indecisiveness and the constant hunger that plagues them all and is the root of most of their problems, are all described in vivid, colourful prose by Okri. He doesn’t leave much to the imagination and the metaphors are relentless. I mean, I can do metaphors but this one is Herculean! Also Okri doesn’t leave much to the imagination, so that his reams of descriptive prose, while arresting, alluring and potent...ultimately wore me down with the effort it took me to focus on the story and message within. He drowns, overwhelms, surrounds and submerges one in a tidal wave of words, which although beautiful are also terrifying and led me to ponder on the purpose of excessive beauty :P

Skilfully woven into this intricate tapestry of words is a tableau of life in an African ghetto. It could as easily be an Indian ghetto – there is a universality about poverty and the life struggles of the ‘poorest of the poor’ – their daily grind of hard labor for minuscule returns; the constant battle with hunger; the endless endeavor to stay healthy, clothed and alive amidst the filth that threatens to destroy their very existence; the hardness that their way of life infuses into their eyes and their spirits; and the small comfort and love they still manage to scavenge from the tiniest of victories – rare and far between. The story is a commentary on Life itself and addresses the usual questions humans ponder – Why are we here? What is our purpose? Will good be rewarded? Why do the innocent suffer while the sinners prosper? How will this all end? Will it end? You get the gist...

Okri tells his tale with the help of a few unforgettable characters – mysterious and effulgent. The ‘Photographer’ and Madame Koto are my two favorites. The former, a shadowy figure, appearing and disappearing at key moments and bringing change – sometimes good. The latter, a ‘symbol’ of the ‘Change’ that is coming and feared by the ghetto-dwellers, a big woman, in body and heart, and a powerful one in wealth and spirit. She stands alone, apart from the rest, and yet their destinies are inevitably & intractably intertwined. Azaro’s parents too are wonderfully written by Okri, his father, a big-muscled man, a boxer in build but a savant in mind, leads an interesting, somewhat charmed life, habitually dueling death, emerging triumphant and more philosophical after each encounter. His mother is a more traditional woman, soft with a backbone of steel, working interminably and inexhaustibly to feed her family, keep her son safe from harm, and keep her family together from one crisis to the next.

And then there are the spirits – I mean they are everywhere! After I while I couldn’t tell whether Azaro was hallucinating them or whether they were real. They are omnipresent and omniscient and after a while onerous and aggravating. I understand the need for spirits in a book where the spirit-world plays an important part, but really there is a limit! Well, I have mine :P Okri uses the road metaphor pretty effectively – journeys mostly internal and spiritual, often in dreams, are a hallmark of this book. That’s what the book is ultimately about – internal journeys and their significance and value to the soul or at least that’s what I got from it ;)

The book is the first in a trilogy and I already have the second in the series, Songs of Enchantment, which is thankfully a much slimmer volume. I wasn’t sure whether I would read it at all, but I know now that I will and probably soon, while this book is fresh in my mind. Just one last thought before I sign off, Okri’s writing and his detailed descriptions reminded me of A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry – another book of similar scope that describes the tragic lives of Mumbai’s poor in excellent, evocative detail. Mistry’s prose is however much drier and consequently not as overbearing, although equally effective in the telling of his story.

This is a good read for devotees of descriptive prose and readers with bucket-loads of patience. In that it’s not very different from the other Bookers I’ve read ;) I need a break from metaphors and so I think I’ll read Anatomy of Disappearance by Hisham Matar next. The blurb reads like a thriller and I’m hopeful!

Before I go, here’s an excerpt from The Famished Road...the whole book reads more or less like this,

“The sun made the air and the earth shimmer and as I kept watch I perceived, in the crack of a moment, the recurrence of things unresolved – histories, dreams, a vanished world of great old spirits, wild jungles, tigers with eyes of diamonds roaming the dense foliage. I saw beings who dragged clanking chains behind them, bleeding from their necks. I saw men and women without wings, sitting in rows, soaring through the empty air. And I saw, flying towards me in widening dots from the centre of the sun, birds and horses whose wings spanned half the sky and whose feathers had the candency of rubies. I shut my eyes; my being whirled; my head tumbled into a well; and I only opened my eyes again, to stop the sensation of falling, when I heard the shattering of glass. The noise woke up the afternoon.”

And, my favorite line from the book, “There are many riddles amongst us that neither the living nor the dead can answer.” If ever there was a line written for Gandalf, this is it ;)
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Jan 05, 2012 Prashant rated it 5 of 5 stars

I read this book a long time back when I was kick starting my preparation for MBA entrances. Honestly by that time I was far away from the mystical effects of Rushdie,Gaiman etc. It struck the first chord of the power of imagination in books in my mind. The book narrates the story of a boy and the various travails his family suffers from. Okri have created a masterpiece with characters which come alive and the story touches you intimately. I was deeply disappointed when the book ended because it...more

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Mar 18, 2013 Adam rated it 5 of 5 stars

My copy of this is a book safe, and it's doing a really good job of hiding some dice, my grandfather's handkerchief, and a necklace that I thought would make me look cool in sixth grade.
Five Stars.

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About Ben Okri

Poet and novelist Ben Okri was born in 1959 in Minna, northern Nigeria, to an Igbo mother and Urhobo father. He grew up in London before returning to Nigeria with his family in 1968. Much of his early fiction explores the political violence that he witnessed at first hand during the civil war in Nigeria. He left the country when a grant from the Nigerian government enabled him to read Comparative...more Poet and novelist Ben Okri was born in 1959 in Minna, northern Nigeria, to an Igbo mother and Urhobo father. He grew up in London before returning to Nigeria with his family in 1968. Much of his early fiction explores the political violence that he witnessed at first hand during the civil war in Nigeria. He left the country when a grant from the Nigerian government enabled him to read Comparative Literature at Essex University in England.

He was poetry editor for West Africa magazine between 1983 and 1986 and broadcast regularly for the BBC World Service between 1983 and 1985. He was appointed Fellow Commoner in Creative Arts at Trinity College Cambridge in 1991, a post he held until 1993. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1987, and was awarded honorary doctorates from the universities of Westminster (1997) and Essex (2002).

His first two novels, Flowers and Shadows (1980) and The Landscapes Within (1981), are both set in Nigeria and feature as central characters two young men struggling to make sense of the disintegration and chaos happening in both their family and country. The two collections of stories that followed, Incidents at the Shrine (1986) and Stars of the New Curfew (1988), are set in Lagos and London.

In 1991 Okri was awarded the Booker Prize for Fiction for his novel The Famished Road (1991). Set in a Nigerian village, this is the first in a trilogy of novels which tell the story of Azaro, a spirit child. Azaro's narrative is continued in Songs of Enchantment (1993) and Infinite Riches (1998). Other recent fiction includes Astonishing the Gods (1995) and Dangerous Love (1996), which was awarded the Premio Palmi (Italy) in 2000. His latest novels are In Arcadia (2002) and Starbook (2007).

A collection of poems, An African Elegy, was published in 1992, and an epic poem, Mental Flight, in 1999. A collection of essays, A Way of Being Free, was published in 1997. Ben Okri is also the author of a play, In Exilus.

In his latest book, Tales of Freedom (2009), Okri brings together poetry and story.

Ben Okri is a Vice-President of the English Centre of International PEN, a member of the board of the Royal National Theatre, and was awarded an OBE in 2001. He lives in London.(less)

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“This is what you must be like. Grow wherever life puts you down.” — 25 people liked it

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