{"product_id":"9780099929307_108","title":"The Famished Road: Booker Prize Winner 1991 (The Famished Road Trilogy, 1) by Okri, Ben | Subject:Literature \u0026 Fiction","description":"\u003cp\u003eProduct Description WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE ?So long as we are alive, so long as we feel, so long as we love, everything in us is an energy we can use? 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.?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 Review This is a book to generate apostles. People will be moved and, with stars in their eyes, will pass on the word ?Time OutOkri 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 SundayIn 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 PalinOverwhelming - just buy it for its beauty ?New StatesmanThe Famished Road is a masterpiece if one ever existed -- Jay Parini ?Boston Sunday Globe From the Inside Flap Set in an unnamed African country at an unspecified time (though the similarities with Nigeria in the early 1960s are unmistakable),The Famished Road is narrated by Azaro, an African spirit-child or abiku who, in the folklore of southern Nigeria, is destined to move continually between life and spiritual paradise in an unending cycle of infant death and rebirth. Azaro, however, is tired of never staying long enough to experience life, and decides on this occasion to remain, \"to put\", he says, \"a smile on my mother's face\".Pursued by vengeful spirits, and endowed with special powers that lead him into mischief, Azaro introduces us to a whole world of wonders -- to his mother and father, an impoverished market trader and a load carrier struggling courageously to keep their dignity and their independence; to Madame Koto, the local bar owner whose journey from innocence to corruption mirrors the realities unfolding around her; to the politics, poverty and brutal reality of life in a shanty town in post-colonial Africa; and to Azaro's own intensely imagined visions. As political corruption becomes endemic and as old tribal traditions clash with the forces of urbanisation, the author shows us the extraordinary mix of hope and despair that characterises his community and the sheer vitality of a society where, as Okri has said, \"the consequences of your actions are immediate and unavoidable\".Deftly mixing mythical visions with naturalistic portrayal, the result is a book of huge scope and originality which works on many levels -- as political parable, social critique, cultural guidebook and spiritual inspiration -- but whose central triumph is its depiction of tight-knit family relations and the entrancing oddity of everyday life. From the Back Cover ?A brilliant read, unlike anything you have ever read before?the message is universal.? -- Philip Howar\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Used Good | Paperback","offers":[{"title":"Used Good","offer_id":42965152006390,"sku":"9780099929307_R1_W3_A4","price":99.0,"currency_code":"INR","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0249\/3857\/8002\/products\/41s4D76KHTL.jpg?v=1648567011","url":"https:\/\/www.worthing.in\/products\/9780099929307_108","provider":"Worthing.in","version":"1.0","type":"link"}