The Famished Road

Ben Okri author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Vintage Publishing

Published:6th Feb '92

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The Famished Road cover

25th anniversary edition of the 'rich', 'magnificent' and 'overwhelming' Booker prize-winning novel

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.

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

This is a book to generate apostles. People will be moved and, with stars in their eyes, will pass on the word * Time Out *
Okri 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 Sunday *
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
Overwhelming - just buy it for its beauty * New Statesman *
The Famished Road is a masterpiece if one ever existed -- Jay Parini * Boston Sunday Globe *

  • Winner of Booker Prize for Fiction 1991

ISBN: 9780099929307

Dimensions: 198mm x 130mm x 35mm

Weight: 400g

592 pages