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Summary: A dream can be the highest point in man's life...
Review: The scope of Ben Okri's 'The Famished Road' knows no bounds! Just as '..a dream can be the highest point in man's life..' this book has been a point of singularity in my life. Set in the backdrop of an African ghetto and the associated social and political developments of a nation struggling to be reborn the life of Azaro fights against the mystic road that threatens his very existence. Songs and vivid pictures and images from the spirit world make up a parallel existence for Azaro and his people and Ben Okri excels in painting new techniques of magic realism. It's a composition; it's a dream and it's a message of hope and love to the deprived people of the world and a search for a new philosophy. An epic in which stories of the world mingle into a fantastic pattern.
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Summary: Caught me in swirls of misty isolation and thermals of joy
Review: Hi!The Famished Road is frankly one of the best books I have read to date. Okri paints with emotions straight on to the page, facilitating an osmosis of perceptions in the readers mind, from one character to the next, enabling one to imagine with perfect clarity the motivation, response and cognitions of each individual character. The story told, is one which could relate to anywhere, but the vision and simplicity of the way it is told left me sheer. A thrilling, depressing, hope embodying, perspective challenging and promising jewel of a book. Please read this book and help it change you.
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Summary: I like all the boxing
Review: Lots of intoxicating images in this book, that I can remember vividly six years after reading it
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Summary: This is my favorite book(sunny? buzzed)
Review: Right now. Go buy this book or at least go to your local libaray and borrow it. I love the way the book doesn't give as much detail which I think makes books boring when they continue of one subject for 15 pages. It is a great story that makes you want to keep reading
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Summary: Ultimately Satisfying
Review: "The Famished Road" is truly a book that requires perseverance and patience to follow the road to its conclusion. A mixture of African myth and traditional narrative, Okri's novel presents a reality so different from our own. I found it tough going at times, but ultimately worth the effort. I learned a great deal and find my interest in thirld world authors growing. A good read!
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Summary: A re-introduction to African literature
Review: I read The Famished Road because a Nigerian won a Booker Prize, never heard of Ben Okri before then. It reminded me of the quality of African literature and showed what I must have missed reading Wole Soyinka's works as a teenager. The narrative is so intense and the result is a beautiful combination of English literary writing and African history and tradition. This book re-awakened my love for literature. I have also read Songs of Enchantment and am halfway through Dangerous Love, which I think is the best I've read.
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Summary: A unique story about the life of a spirit child.
Review: Ben Okri's skill's as a writer is just magnificent. He explores that mysteries of African/Nigerian cultures in depth. He paints pictures with the stroke of his words. I have read this book about 4 times now, and each time I read it, it gets better. He is definitely one of the finer writers of this century. I anticipate every new novel of his, just to experience great literature and writing. He is an African treasure.
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Summary: The Unfinshable Road
Review: The dentist's chair was a welcome relief from this festering root canal therapy substitute. The cover sucked me in. How was I to know that the title was secretly warning me I had been lured on a journey that would turn me off literature for over a year. I've gotten over relationships in less time. Use your time more wisely and read "The God of Small Things" for the second time, instead.
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Summary: Strong on style, short on content
Review: This wonderfully written book was a joy to read for the quality of the prose and the stunning visual images Okri extracts from every sentence. Almost any random paragraph from this novel could be taken in isolation as a work of art. Beneath this veneer of technique, the story begins involvingly and promises to develop into a profound allegorical tale. And for me this is where it all rather fell apart. Aside from the beauty of the writing, the story goes nowhere, and fails both as a modern day fairy story and as a commentary on modern Africa; the scenes referencing the destruction of the environment or the corruptness of African politics are very clumsily done. When compared to the depth of V.S. Naipul's writing (try 'In A Free State' if you haven't already - another Booker winning novel), you realise that Okri's work is very, very pretty, but that's about it.
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Summary: To the happy few...
Review: I think there has been some kind of general misunderstanding about THE FAMISHED ROAD. The misunderstanding went on with SONGS OF ENCHANTMENT, its sequel. I'm a scholar and I devote most of my academic time to the study of contemporary African fiction, with special care for novels written in English. Most readers have not understood the book properly, because they thought that this was pure fancy, or, worse, sheer delirium, talented though it might be. What must be repeated over and over again is that Okri is indebted to such Yoruba authors like D.O. Fagunwa or the Anglophone pioneer Amos Tutuola. Concerning Azaro's status as an abiku (or spirit-child), many readers (and many critics in the press as well, which is really frightening!) thought that this was a new situation that Okri had made up. The fact is that abikus (or ogbanjes, the Igbo equivalent) are part and parcel of West African culture. So, Azaro's whole story is not pure fancy; it is myth in its deepest sense. Once you realize that, everything is clearer, isn't it? The various episodes, such as the political mayhem or Madame Koto's gradual transformation, can be seen in the light of myth. The abiku child is not just a metaphor or an allegory (though Okri uses it ALSO as an allegory, at the end of the novel): Azaro's predicament means that he wants to escape his epic status to become a real person, a human being of flesh and blood. All along the novel, his double vision is at the same time an advantage and a threat. By presenting the reader with a character who wants to become something else than a mythical figure, Okri passes a metafictional comment on writing and novel-reading. Guillaume Cingal (Author of an 84-page pre-PHD memoir: "Child characters in Breyten Breytenbach's MEMORY OF SNOW AND OF DUST, Nuruddin Farah's MAPS and Ben Okri's THE FAMISHED ROAD.) Obviously, there is a lot that should be said or that I could say about Ben Okri's fiction, but I wouldn't have enough room here.
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