Customer Reviews

The Famished Road

5 star:		(39)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

If you have read the rest of the reviews on this page, you will have already gotten the message that the book takes some effort to read. This, for me, was mostly true at the beginning. It was obvious straight away that it drew heavily from a tradition of mythology to which I had no access. It is not so much that this was a barrier to my being able to read it; it is more that I kept expecting it to be a barrier and initially fought the flow of the book, trying to make sense of things that were not important to understand precisely.

To my mind, there are several ways to read magic realism. One way is to understand all the mythology and all the references that are included and use that understanding to directly enrich the "real" level of the book. The other way is to let the real and the mythic flow together and hope that the author is skilled enough to knit the two elements such that you do not need an academic understanding to follow the story. I think that Okri is a terrifically talented writer, and I found that once I got over my initial discomfort I was more than able to follow the narrative. The plot, to me, did not seem particularly hidden or unclear and I did not have the feeling that it was written for academics.

_The Famished Road_ tells the story of Lazarus/Azaro, a spirit child who chooses to stay in the impoverished world of reality, rather than return to the ideal world of the spirits. His family struggles with the impotence of their situation, baffled by politics and poverty and conditions beyond their control. The world of the compound is full of magic both real and imagined as the characters search for a way to influence their lives in the face of forces which seem to make things inalterable. Myth becomes a kind of resistance against the politicians who fight in the street and hand out poisoned milk.

I found it beautiful to read, and only slightly less rich because I did not know the surrounding mythological setting. If you are interested in the book, do not be put off by the more frightening reviews. It is not as dense as it initially appears and once I got used to the prose, I found that it read quickly and very smoothly.

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.

Cave-dwelling humans told their own stories with well placed marks on walls, precise sounds and bodily gestures. In all cultures, to delight and instruct, people tell stories and recite poetry that imitate life as they experience it but not necessarily palpably. Not only are these stories different but so are their modes of presentation. This review should prepare you for the interwoven anecdotes that comprise The Famished Road.

I am a Yoruba and the narrator of Okri's book, Azaro, is an `abiku' which literarily means `one born to die' in the Yoruba language. Ultimately, we are all born to die so abiku refers strictly to consecutive deaths of an infant; it underscores the eternal belief of Yoruba people in reincarnation and names like Kokumo, (will not die again); Malomo, (don't leave again); and Rotimi, (stay with me), are supplications to abiku children. When the pleas are not heeded, radical measures are sometimes taken in the form of branding an already dead infant with the hope that the blemish will lead to its rejection by peers in the spirit world. It is almost always observed that a child born right after a `branded' one not only returns with the exact `mutilation' as a birthmark but it also does not return to the spirit world! One must suspend disbelief to experience osmosis with Azaro's accounts.

From time immemorial, raconteurs told stories replete with myths and superstitions. In much more recent memory, the philosopher, Aristotle, proposed structural elements for Western stories: plot, to unify time, space and action in linear, palpable and causal ways respectively; characters that are rationally motivated; realistic points of view, settings and so on. Sans Aristotle, sans formula, this story is narrated at different levels of consciousness: it is a diffusion of the impossible or implausible into earthly possibilities, suffused with space-time-warping phenomena; anecdotes narrated in the media of haunting by the dead; dreams that foreshadow or flash back to reality; Kafkaesque transformations into creatures interpenetrating one another; grotesque, carnivalesque occurrences and laughable terror a la Rabelais; mutual, mimetic dramatization among incongruous acts; simultaneous dealings with God and the devil and other rich ambiguities! As we are alone in our essential moments - birth and death, for example, Okri may have made us forbidden eavesdroppers on Azaro's essential moments.

If we believe some deconstructionists, Okri's narrator, Azaro, chronicled the emergence of Nigeria from British colonialism through the third eye that writers in the tradition of Magical Realism employ to create fantastic and surreal images, allegories, metaphors and symbolisms. Another character in the book, Madame Koto, stands in for the dilemma of the upper class in that country when confronted with insufferable deprivation of others. The use of Magical Realists' techniques for political indictment situates Okri squarely in a literary lineage stretching from Kafka through Jorge Luis Borges, (The Garden of Forking Paths, [Collection]), and Gabriel Jose Garcia Marquez. Nobel laureate, Marquez, (One Hundred Years of Solitude), wrote "The Autumn of the Patriarch" in 1975 to expose one of the darkest hours of political history in Latin America. Itself an oxymoron, Magical Realism, resonates with the opposite worlds it yokes together in this book.

Not totally unrelated to the effects of colonialism, Okri has probably ingested as much English Literature as any other former winner of the Booker Prize for literature so he knows when and how to break rules to achieve his own designs. This book confirms that he is an extraordinary prose stylist and his turns of phrase are worth the price of the book. Please visit the bookstore near you and read the last line in The Famished Road and if it moves you, you are ready for a forgotten human journey.

Those people who grew disappointed because they were looking for a "plot" and "character development" were looking for the wrong things. This is a book about consciousness, point of view, and how the world is seen from a standpoint of sacredness. The little boy is not so much the narrator as the consciousness that filters this world to us. No, there is not much in the way of plot, although many things happen. "Going somewhere" is not what this book is about. Rather, "being somewhere", and viewing that place in a different way, is what it is about. This the author accomplishes stupendously, with vivid, imaginitive prose, a startlingly original worldview, and an amazing eye for detail. If you like unique books that challenge your ordinary perspecitive on things, this book is for you. If you usually read Stephen King or Tom Clancy, forget it

I checked this book out from the library and returned it before finishing it because I thought it was repetitive and tedious, albeit beautifully written. I returned to the library for the book two weeks later because I couldn't get the characters and prose out of my mind. Scenes and narratives from this book will stay with me for years to come. I've copied passages down that took my breath away with their beauty so that I can read them over again. A life-affirming, haunting work that will have a lasting and tremendous impact on my worldview. A book unlike any other I have read.

War, strife, misery, corruption, poverty, emotional and physical brutality, hypocracy, intimidation. It is a short list, but they are indeed the fundamentally potent ingredients that could make anyone who is simmering in the total unhappiness of it all truly yearn unceasingly for an existence in another realm, where the chains of seemingly unending suffering are simply melted away into nonexistence. In poverty laced and psychologically decimated "modern" Nigeria, as written by Ben Okri, the Nigerian society as a whole or a good chunk of it, would be one camp where death would be a liberating gift from the undesired toilings of harsh day-to-day realities. With mellifluous simplicity, Ben Okri creates duel worlds: one heavenly, one earthly. And in the duality, there is a responsive spirit-child named Azaro who can cross the bridge of life into death and death into life, as one who consistently has near death experiences. But each requires a sacrifice, for when Azaro traverses into the dimension of spirit, he must leave behind his mother and father who love him, though much of his earthly actions bring about stress and frustration, as well as joy and pleasure--more of the former than the latter, however. But if he stays in the land of the living, he must endure the hardships that are naturally affixed to it. He gets himself stuck, as if in a Catch-22, hankering for both the spiritual and earthly worlds. Through the vast array of characters: Mom, Dad, Madam Koto, the Photographer, various political yes-men, the boxer Green Leapard, the blind man, Ade, et cetera, the raw yet richly cultured Afrocentric aura looms lushly outward in an almost literary 3-D manner. Village life, culture and mythical behavior, as well as the "game" or "tragedy" (you choose) of African politics via the technique of magical realism is very much fleshed out. The simplicity of the writing style in no way, shape or form mollifies the palpable depth of the characters who must live and survive in an all-too-consuming oppressive environment that would seem quite alien to most of us---in an upper/middle class creme de la creme point of view. The Famished Road is dense, plodding and absolutely wild in its limitlessness of human imagination, a genuine wordy and intellectual tour de force if ever there was one and certainly worthy of its Booker Prize!

I found this book on the first night of a stay at a lodge in remote Costa Rica. It is the most beautiful book I've ever read. Much of it was read aloud to my partner. The author's command of the language and lyricism make for a magical read. You are in capable hands with Ben Okri. The book probably makes more sense to those with some knowledge of Nigerian mythology. As a reader without this knowledge, I surrendered to the beauty he created and had an incredible experience.

I have enjoyed few books as much as I have The Famished Rd. Although at times the descriptions of the child's spiritual jouneys can get a little tedious, ultimately this book is a beautiful journey, a must read for anybody who appreciates aesthetic uses of English. Already in the opening chapters the lyrical quality enchants the reader. It's a fat book, but persevere, it provides great solace for those who are doubting whether life is worth living if one is not materially well off, as it deals with poverty and brutality in a way which shows that one can remain unaffected as the boy in the story, who frequently enters a completely different dimension of consciousness, as we too feel we are being initiated into African folklore and spiritual wisdom.

I found this book by accident a while back...as I rummaged through some huge bookstore. I read it. It brought back memories of home: the superstitions of Nigeria. Tales of "Mammi Water" (sirens), Ogbanjo (ghost children, or children who are reborn only to die young), Gbomogbomo 9kidnappers). Our versions of boogie-men. It also reminded me of the beauty of oral tradition and the invincable spirit of tenacious, flamboyant, determined, ever witty Nigerians. The tale is mesmerizing, fantastic, fantabulous, and beautiful. Now if I could only get my mother to relinquish it so I can re-read it, I could die happily!

This is one of the most wonderful books I have ever read. It's lush, full of life, vivid, surreal, and down right eerie. If I can only write half as well as Okri, I'll be very pleased with myself. This book is long, yes. And yes, I am well versed in Nigerian history and folklore, though I am Igbo, not Yoruba. So maybe I was at an advantage and I understood things on more levels than the average reader. But it held me in a way that no other book ever has. I've read Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Salman Rushdie AND Stephen King. I love all three of them. But I love Okri the most. This book was delicious.