Famished Road Trilogy – serie

The second book in the trilogy which began with the Booker prize-winning The Famished Road.'A love story and an account of the conflict between the parties of the Rich and Poor... Okri's voice is all his own' IndependentHaving outwitted death, Azaro, the spirit child, remains in the land of the Living. Oppression and violence continue to plague the city, and while political factions battle, bar owner Madame Koto backs the 'Party of the Rich' with magical, bewitching force. But for Azaro, his adventure is tied up with his parents, and so his story takes on yet another heroic adventure to save them both from the forces of the world. 'Ben Okri writes beautifully...a triumph of inspiration over the everyday' The Times

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

FROM THE BOOKER PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR OF THE FAMISHED ROADIn the chaotic world of his African city, the spirit child Azaro still watches the tumultous and tender lives of the Living; refusing to return to his realm. With his father now imprisoned for a crime he did not commit and his mother battling for justice, the final chapter of Azaro's epic adventure is an explosive and haunting climax to this masterful trilogy.'His most apocalyptic, explosive vision yet' Scotsman'A novel of paradoxes and impossibilities, conceived poetically and carrying readers along as thoughon a fast-flowing stream' Literary Review