Book 10: ‘The Famished Road’ by Ben Okri

Book ten was a choice between any of these three:

‘The Famished Road’ by Ben Okri

‘Alone in Berlin’ by Hans Fallada

‘Ancillary Justice’ by Ann J. Leckie

Having already been an option for book eight and a hangover from a time when I desired to read all of the Booker Prize winning novels, ‘The Famished Road’ ended up being the next book in my attempt to drastically reduce my TBR pile.

Goodreads summary:

In the decade since it won the Booker Prize, Ben Okri’s Famished Road has become a classic. Like Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children or Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, it combines brilliant narrative technique with a fresh vision to create an essential work of world literature.

The narrator, Azaro, is an abiku, a spirit child, who in the Yoruba tradition of Nigeria exists between life and death. The life he foresees for himself and the tale he tells is full of sadness and tragedy, but inexplicably he is born 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.

In recent years, some of my most favourite novels have been written by authors born in Africa. From the vivid imagery of different cultures (all too often plagued by violence and war), to protagonists that struggle to find meaning within forever changing circumstances, they’ve felt like a fresh perspective and an urgent voice that I have thoroughly enjoyed getting to explore.

This exploration of a markedly different culture to my own is one that means I won’t outright pan ‘The Famished Road’ by Ben Okri as there are many pages of wonderful description, brutal aggression and a hint of dark humour that are worthy of mention. Unfortunately, the magical realism that at times brings the most evocative moments also leads to a feeling that the book is often spiralling around a central point more so than making narrative progress. To some, this wouldn’t be an issue, but to me, it felt that the novel only got going in fits and starts, though the second and third Book (with the story being split into three) do go some way to build towards an effective conclusion.

Azaro is the main protagonist and he is an abiku, or spirit child. Having chosen a life on Earth that is manifestly predicted to be one of sorrow over time in the spirit world, we primarily follow Azaro, his parents and local bar owner Madame Koto as increasing modernisation and politics begin to impact upon the lives they lead. As was suggested from the get go, Azaro’s family’s life is rarely one of great triumph, though it almost feels somewhat repetitive the eventual outcomes of many of the chapters. Things spiral out of control; violence occurs; Azaro witnesses something magical; he is told off by his parents – all of these things seem to happen on a loop that offer fairly diminishing returns.

Whilst the spirit world and moments within reality are described in very poetic fashion, a lot of the workaday elements of the novel are presented fairly staidly. It begins to feel like a list of events that are being narrated rather than an engaging narrative at times. Charitably, it could be suggested that this aims to mimic the drudgery of the lives of these characters, especially when transposed against the world that Azaro could have chosen, but it doesn’t entirely work for me.

That is not to say that ‘The Famished Road’ doesn’t have its positives. As aforementioned, the final Books in the story finally feel like the story is moving forward, as well as leading to some of the better set pieces as Azaro’s Dad trains to be a boxer and gets involved in several high profile fights. With his new found popularity, a desire to make a real change to the lives of others follows, leading to a feeling that maybe things might make an upturn for the better.

The cast of characters outside of Azaro’s family also help to carry a prolonged story that inches forward in places. Madame Koto in particular casts a significant shadow over the narrative, a formidable woman who is also seduced by the power and money inherent within the political sphere. A photographer and a blind old man recur alongside several others, each with their eccentricities adding a healthy dose of flavour to support the occasionally dreary storyline.

‘The Famished Road’ is a book that I can see why people loved at the time and will still hold in high esteem today. However, all too often the flights of fancy that the genre can entail felt forced and confusing more than magical, whilst the narrative thrust came a little too late for me.