New Releases by Ben Okri

In this modern fable with the impish magic of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a masked ball makes two upper-class British couples see each other in a new light. A wise, enchanting novel about love, power, and our many selves—past and future, public and private—from the Booker Prize–winning author. There are organizations for people who grieve, for alcoholics and other kinds of addicts. But if you’ve been devastated by the love of your life walking out on you, where the hell do you go? On the 20th anniversary of the day her first husband left her, Viv decides to host an unconventional party for those burned by love. She successfully ropes in her reluctant second husband, Alan, and their friends Beatrice and Stephen, and when she meets the famed fortuneteller Madame Sosostris—last seen in T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, and rumored to be the secret to success of 5 prime ministers—she believes she’s found the perfect act to headline her masquerade. In a sacred wood in the south of France, the partygoers disguise themselves and wait eagerly for the great clairvoyant, who might be able to mend their broken pasts and brighten their futures. But the night soon goes awry, in a comically revealing way that causes our couples to question their relationships and the direction of their lives.

This moving poetry collection from the Booker Prize–winning author finds strength and hope while reflecting on the complex issues that have burdened Africa. First published in 1992, Ben Okri’s remarkable debut collection features poems that are now considered classics and taught in schools and universities worldwide. Here he plays with the mystique of the African continent, countering simplistic narratives of suffering that have been imposed on it with vibrant, nuanced portraits of the traditions and resilience of African peoples. An invaluable window onto Okri’s experiences as a Nigerian immigrant to the United Kingdom and as a writer discovering his calling, these poems also speak to universal truths about love, injustice, and the search for meaning.

In this enchanting novel from the Booker Prize–winning author, a group of world-weary travelers discover the meaning of life in a mysterious Swiss mountain village. The Age of Magic has begun. Unveil your eyes. Eight weary filmmakers, traveling from Paris to Basel, arrive at a small Swiss hotel on the shores of a luminous lake. Above them, strewn with lights that twinkle in the darkness, looms the towering Rigi mountain. Over the course of three days and two nights, the travelers will find themselves drawn into the mystery of the mountain reflected in the lake. One by one, they will be disturbed, enlightened, and transformed, each in a different way. An intoxicating and dreamlike tale unfolds. Allow yourself to be transformed. Having shown a different way of seeing the world, Ben Okri now offers a different way of reading.

An epic poem touching on issues of racism, intolerance, and environmental destruction, from the Booker Prize–winning author. There is much to celebrate in the human journey so far—art in all its forms, advances made in the fields of technology and medicine, and for many of us, the miracle of freedom. But there is also much to regret—racism, intolerance, the destruction of our environment, the reality and the legacy of slavery. In this long, sustained consideration of the state we find ourselves in, Ben Okri invokes the past to explain the present, and sings out a message of hope. The future is still ours to make. This epic poem, an anthem for the twenty-first century, first appeared in The Times in January 1999. Its message could hardly be more relevant to our present condition. Discover this revised edition of an inspiring and extraordinarily tender work.

A Best Book of 2023 by The New Yorker In this poignant, timely collection, the renowned Booker Prize–winning author evokes the magic of nature and the urgency of protecting our environment. Twenty thousand years after a catastrophe wiped out the human race, visitors uncover their final messages scattered across the planet, in flooded cities and disintegrating books. These writings reveal the tragedies of people who continued to live as they always did—fearfully, selfishly—even as the end of their world loomed. These haunting stories within a story, together with a powerful selection of poems, fables, and essays, are a necessary reminder of the beauty of the earth and the importance of addressing the climate crisis with clarity, artistry, and passion.

The Booker Prize–winning author, a child of the Nigerian Civil War, reinvents through the story of the Atlantic slave trade the beautiful soul and resilient culture of his country. A boy and a girl meet by chance on a riverbank in Africa. One is the son of a king, struggling to find his place in the world, the other the daughter of a craftsman from the secretive tribe of master artists. The prince, entranced, stays hidden in the bushes. The girl, knowing nothing of him but his voice, agrees to meet again. When she fails to appear the next day, he begins to search for her, tracing her at last to her village where, disguised as an apprentice, he finds a place in her father’s workshop. But this is no fairy tale, no conventional love story. Their world—though they don’t know it yet—is ending. A strange wind has begun to blow, and in its wake, things are disappearing: songs, stories, artworks, and finally, people. Beautiful ships with white sails are glimpsed on the horizon… When the novel was first published in the UK in 2007 under the title Starbook, the central role of the Middle Passage was overlooked. Okri has since rewritten the book, giving it a new dimension, more light, more acumen. In 2022 the deep political impact of this extraordinary tale won’t be missed.

Questa è la storia di Azaro, un abiku, ossia uno spirito bambino che, secondo la tradizione Yoruba nigeriana, esiste tra la Terra e il mondo degli spiriti. Il suo destino è quello di nascere e morire più volte perché è irresistibilmente attratto dal ritorno alla dimensione a cui appartiene, un luogo di pace, dove la sofferenza non esiste. Quello degli abiku è l’eterno andirivieni di esseri incapaci di scendere a patti con la vita e dotati della facoltà di scegliere il momento in cui morire. Azaro nasce, e cresce, in un mondo di povertà, ingiustizie e violenza ma lo fa con il sorriso sulle labbra e, anche se sente forte il richiamo del luogo da cui proviene e dei suoi compagni abiku, decide di rimanere sulla terra dei vivi per cercare di capire, comprendere e amare, anche a costo di patire la fame e di soffrire. Ben Okri, attraverso gli occhi di Azaro, racconta un’Africa a metà tra il mito e la realtà dei nostri giorni, ricca di contraddizioni, di povertà e di violenza, che sembrano precludere la via della speranza, ma gli spiriti e l’anima del continente continuano a esistere e a resistere.

The Guardian: Best Children''s and YA Book of the Year An environmental fairytale that speaks eloquently to the most pressing issues of our times, from the Booker Prize–winning author of The Famished Road. Mangoshi lives with her mom and dad in a village near the forest. When her mom becomes ill, Mangoshi knows only one thing can help her—a special flower that grows deep in the forest. The little girl needs all her courage when she sets out alone to find and bring back the flower, and all her kindness to overpower the dangers she encounters on the quest. Ben Okri brings the power of his mystic vision to a timely story that weaves together wonder, adventure, and environmentalism.

I racconti di Ben Okri, vincitore del Booker Prize, mescolano diversi piani di realtà, sempre in bilico fra oscurità e magia. Storie irriverenti, incredibili, a volte divertenti altre sconvolgenti, ambientate a Londra, a Bisanzio, nel ghetto, sulle Ande, e in altri luoghi noti ma misteriosi, con protagonisti diversi che abbracciano una molteplicità di personaggi umani, e non solo. Ben Okri si dimostra un autore all’apice della sua potenza espressiva, che padroneggia sapientemente il mezzo del racconto per far ridere il lettore, per farlo pensare, per fargli ribaltare completamente il punto di vista su ciò che lo circonda. Ventitré storie, ventitré mondi nei quali chiedersi dove sia il confine fra illusione e realtà. “Ben Okri è una perla rara, un autore in cui scrittura, cultura e visione appaiono profondamente intrecciate.” Ali Smith “Okri è un maestro del racconto.” The Herald “Okri è sempre una buona compagnia e in questi ventitré racconti mostra, una volta di più, la sua prosa precisa e la sua vivace fantasia.” The Mail on Sunday

Set in an African village, this follow-up to the Man Booker Prize–winning novel is "sometimes whimsical, sometimes bawdy . . . Fraught with wild visions" ( The Times). "All is not well in the African village where Azaro lives. The child narrator of poet and novelist Okri''s The Famished Road, who had outwitted death in the previous book, again relates the oppressive events that continue to plague his village and his family. While political factionalization shatters the community''s cohesiveness, the prodigious bar owner Madame Koto, chief exponent of the ''Party of the Rich,'' alternately exudes portentous metaphysical malaise and miraculous erotic force. Little Azaro, himself touched and distracted by a series of animuses, follows the heels of ''dad,'' who is a resounding vessel, by turns, of cantankerous egotism and abased self-sacrifice. This Nigerian epic reveals a violent provincial world, opaque with magical spirits which place horrendous ethical demands on fragile and fickle humanity, as if to test each individual for a thread of virtuous constancy at the core. Events drench the essentially linear narrative with all the ruthless sensuousness of a tropical storm, and Okri''s prose is lucid and deft." — Publishers Weekly "Okri conjures up the fabulous with the same ease as he affectingly details the ways of the human spirit in a lovingly evoked African setting teeming with life—both real and mythic . . . Stunning." — Kirkus Reviews "Once again we''re bedazzled and bedeviled by Okri''s phantasmagoric prose and the strange and wondrous sensibility of Azaro, a spirit-child living in a poor African village." — Booklist "Both a love story and an account of the political turmoil between the parties of Rich and Poor." — The Independent "Passages of extraordinary beauty . . . Okri paints a convincing surrealist picture." — The Sunday Times

An NPR Best Book of 2020: "Okri''s tale is especially resonant in our current post-truth environment." — Booklist (starred review) In a world uncomfortably like our own, a young woman called Amalantis is arrested for asking a question. Her question is this: Who is the Prisoner? When Amalantis disappears, her lover Karnak goes looking for her. He searches desperately at first, then with a growing realization that to find Amalantis, he must first understand the meaning of her question. Karnak''s search leads him into a terrifying world of deception, oppression, and fear at the heart of which lies the prison. Then Karnak discovers that he is not the only one looking for the truth. The Freedom Artist is an impassioned plea for justice and a penetrating examination of how freedom is threatened in a post-truth society. In Ben Okri''s most significant novel since the Booker Prize–winning The Famished Road, he delivers a powerful and haunting call to arms. "With the stark power of myth, this political allegory evolves into an argument for artistic freedom." — The New York Times Book Review "[With] prophetic warnings of apocalypse akin to Octavia Butler''s The Parable of the Sower, The Freedom Artist offers a contemplative look at post-truth society." — Sierra Magazine "The concise, declarative prose and the parable-like architecture of the stories resemble ancient forms of wisdom literature." — The Wall Street Journal "Combines fable, folklore, and mythology with moments of surreal horror to produce a rallying cry against the oppressive institutions that would seek to make knowledge illegal." — Locus Magazine

Quattordici storie fortemente evocative in cui il realismo di Ben Okri offre una chiave di lettura della complessità della vita in Africa. Le storie si dividono tra mondo urbano e mondo rurale, dove diversi sono i modi di sentire e di vivere. Sotto un sole implacabile o nella stagione delle grandi piogge, la vita a Lagos è frenetica, a volte drammatica, ma ricca di calda umanità, talvolta anche di poesia. La narrazione spesso travalica il reale e sfiora un universo onirico intessuto di mitologie ancestrali.

As one of Britain''s foremost poets, Ben Okri brings both poetry and story together, paring writing and image down to their essentials. This significant title story ''The Comic Destiny'' forms the centrepiece of this collection, complemented by thirteen magical stokus. In his new introduction Ben Okri describes it as a talisman, an alchemic instigator for much of his later work. The stoku is a blend of story and haiku. And thirteen, according to the author, is the number of liberation. All these stories are about freedom. They flow easily, but burn slowly. And they offer the possibility of freedom beyond the confines of our usual perception. ''Moments of genuine insight and poetry'' Guardian. ''Okri''s writing has a light-as-air elegance, yet its seriousness keeps the stories gravity bound'' New Statesman.

Twenty-five stories, twenty-five paintings, five years to write, ten years to paint. This is an extraordinary collaboration between artist and artist: the Booker Prize-winning writer Ben Okri and the painter Rosemary Clunie. Together they have created a world, and peopled it with dreams. Twenty-five fairy tales for adults, these narratives are a response to our times, informed by our world but not limited by it, imaginative, enchanting, haunting – both prescient and prophetic. Twenty-five original paintings, beautiful, playful, intimate, dreamlike, these works pull you in to a land of colour and vision. Who can say which came first, the word or image, when both grew together out of a long friendship and a creative symbiosis. What if Calvino and Magritte had combined inspiration? What if we could see our world again with a child''s eyes? What if there really is a magic lamp?

Roman Cesta sestradanih, za katerega je Ben Okri leta 1991 dobil Bookerjevo nagrado, je izrazit primer izvirne afriške postkolonialne literature, v marsičem pa ga je mogoče primerjati tudi z romani južnoameriškega ali indijskega magičnega realizma. Ni naključje, da ga kritiki postavljajo ob bok Salmanu Rushdieju ali Gabrielu Garcíi Márquezu. V romanu se naturalistični opisi geta in njegovih prebivalcev prepletajo z bogastvom domišljije plemenskih mitov in duhov, ki iz ozadja neprestano posegajo v kruto in tragično vsakdanjost. Zgodbo pripoveduje deček, ki z očetom in materjo odrašča v eni sami sobi, v bednih in pogosto življenjsko nevarnih razmerah značilnega afriškega geta, kakršnih je vse polno na obrobju podsaharskih velemest ob gvinejskem zalivu. A čeprav živijo v skrajni bedi, se nikoli ne izneverijo družinski ljubezni in skrbi drug za drugega, globoko človeški poštenosti, gostoljubnosti in čutu za pravičnost. Skozi spretno prelivanje tostranskega sveta političnega nasilja in zlorab bogatih, življenja na robu izstradanosti, neprestane izpostavljenosti smrti po eni strani in po drugi vztrajnega poseganja tropsko razkošnega, a temačnega sveta animalističnih duhov, živih sanj in presenetljivih magičnih obratov nas pisatelj prepričljivo vodi skozi labirint enotne resničnosti, za katero nikoli ni jasno, kateremu svetu pripada.

‘In every moment, we are part of the infinite stories that the universe is telling us and that we are telling the universe.’ Packed with ideas and inspiration, The Mystery Feast offers numerous pathways into the magical world of storytelling. Beginning with a poem, ‘All we do’, Booker prize-winning novelist Ben Okri presents his considered thoughts on the purpose and meaning of stories, concluding with a series of condensed ‘Notes to the modern storyteller’. The collection is completed with a ‘stoku’ – a brief tale on the theme. Based on decades of honing his art, this stimulating booklet gives a glimpse into the mind of a master of contemporary storytelling.

[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]

An epic of daily life, Dangerous Love is one of Ben Okri''s most accessible and most disarming novels. Omovo is an office worker and artist who lives at home with his father and his father''s second wife. In the communal world of the compound in which he lives, Omovo has both friends and enemies, but his most important relationship is with Ifeyiwa, a beautiful young married woman whom he loves with an almost hopeless passion – not because she doesn''t return his love, but because they can never be together. Set against the backdrop of a country struggling to come to terms with the aftermath of a recent civil war, this is a story of doomed love – of star-crossed lovers, separated not by their families, but by the very circumstances of their lives.

"Somos oyentes del oráculo. Algunos oyen pero no escuchan. Algunos escuchan, pero no oyen. Los que verdaderamente escuchan quedan tocados y cambiados."En un primer nivel, El mago de las estrellas cuenta la delicada historia de un príncipe y una doncella que se ven sometidos a las pruebas de una tierra mítica en la que el arte, la iniciación y el silencio son extremadamente importantes.En un segundo nivel, esta rica y estimulante novela desvela la naturaleza de la realidad, en la que la esencia de la vida es revelada y la fuente del encantamiento puede ser nuestra, en la que la belleza, la regeneración y la realización son, quizá, posibles.Pero ante todo nos encontramos ante un asombroso logro de la imaginación y ante una profunda obra literaria de la misma estirpe que El camino hambriento, que le valió a Ben Okri el Premio Booker. Estamos ante una novela de una lectura apasionante e inmensamente placentera que irradia un aura inolvidable. "Su primera novela tras cinco años de espera, sitúa al ganador del Booker Prize, Ben Okri, en la gran tradición de los creadores de mitos ejemplificada en Cien años de soledad y Los hijos de la medianoche."Ben Brown, THE OBSERVER "LA ÚLTIMA NOVELA DEL GANADOR DEL BOOKER PRIZEse convierte en una sugerente metáfora de la vida y la muerte."Anita Sethi, THE INDEPENDENT

Een man meent dat hij en zijn volk onzichtbaar zijn want in boeken staan ze nooit vermeld. Daarom gaat hij op zoek naar zichtbaarheid.

Azaro the spirit child is a reluctant traveller in the realities of this world. His adventures begin with the disruption of his family, when, under the pressure of poverty and myth, his mother goes off to follow the legendary Madame Koto. An obsession for a beautiful beggar girl ensnares his father into forbidden visions. Through the experiences of this unique family the reader learns that life lived with compassion, fire and serenity can vanquish the forces of oppression and counter the darkness with light.

"Uendelig rikdom" er tredje og siste bind i den nigerianske forfatteren Ben Okris store romansyklus om Azaro, hans foreldre og deres naboer i et fattig boligkvarter i utkanten av Lagos. Boken åpner et nytt kapittel i Azaros historie, åndebarnet fra romanen "Den sultne veien", som ble belønnet med Booker-prisen, og fortsettelsen, "Fortryllelsens sanger". I "Uendelig rikdom" blir Azaros far arrestert, uberettiget anklaget for mord. Men hans mor iverksetter en kampanje for å få ham løslatt. Det blir startskuddet for et opprør som kuliminerer med tumulten omkring Nigerias første presidentvalg. Som i de to foregående bøkene er også dette en roman om ulike typer rikdom og forskjellige former for makt. Det er kontrastene i nåtidens Afrika som er romanens brennstoff, et Afrika i sosial, politisk og mental forvandling, der ingenting er helt som det ser ut til å være.