Title: The Famished RoadAuthor: Ben Okri
Context: African: Nigerian: Published 1991
Genre: Fiction / Fantastic Fiction
About:
"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." Life and death intermingled. There was no fear, only an understanding with the spirit world. Rebirth was common and many people looked forward to "birth" (death) with pleasure."
This is my favourite book and Ben Okri is my favourite author. Okri writes in such a way as to make few words paint vivid scenes. The dialogue is minimal but the characters are both complex and larger than life.
Okri finds beauty in poverty and struggle. The protagonist is Azaro who is an abiku (spirit child) whose companions want him to return to their realm of playful existence, but resists because of his love for his family.
The landscape and the language are surreal. Many characters balance on the brink of the known world and the unknown. Okri brings wonder to the most mundane of objects.
You do not so much read this book, as travel through it in a trance, transfixed by the incredible life of a small African child.
Summary: Incredible. Read it...Love it.
Extras:
- Won the Man Booker prize for fiction in 1991.
- This book was the inspiration for the track The Road Is Always Hungry on the Found Objects Self-Titled LP - the CD version also had a multimedia mixing sound toy based on the track.
- Thom Yorke of Radiohead says that this book was an influence on the track Street Spirit from the LP The Bends along with R.E.M. whom, he admits, has "ripped off left, right and centre for years and years and years (Third Way Magazine, October 11th 2004).
