The Famished Road

You have never read a novel like this one. Winner of the 1991 Booker Prize for fiction, The Famished Road tells the story of Azaro, a spirit-child. Though spirit-children rarely stay long in the painful world of the living, when Azaro is born he chooses to fight death: "I wanted", he says, "to make happy the bruised face of the woman who would become my mother." Survival in his chaotic African village is a struggle, though. Azaro and his family must contend with hunger, disease and violence, as well as the boy's spirit- companions, who are constantly trying to trick him back into their world. Okri fills his tale with unforgettable images and characters: the bereaved policeman and his wife, who try to adopt Azaro and dress him in their dead son's clothes; the photographer who documents life in the village and displays his pictures in a cabinet by the roadside; Madame Koto, "plump as a mighty fruit", who runs the local bar; the King of the Road, who gets hungrier the more he eats.

At the heart of this hypnotic novel are the mysteries of love and human survival. "It is more difficult to love than to die", says Azaro's father, and indeed, it is love that brings real sharpness to suffering here. As the story moves toward its climax, Azaro must face the consequences of choosing to live, of choosing to walk the road of hunger rather than return to the benign land of spirits. The Famished Road is worth reading for its last line alone, which must be one of the most devastating endings in contemporary literature (but don't skip ahead). -- R. Ellis

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Rewards persistence - Rated
Firstly, this book demands a bit of persistence. Okri begins with a series of hallucinatory passages as we follow the picaresque adventures of 'spirit child' Azaro. These adventures are pretty inconsequential, while the only reason he is a spirit child seems to be as a metaphor for Nigeria, as revealed towards the end: "Our country is an abiku country. Like the spirit-child, it keeps coming and going. One day it will decide to remain. It will become strong."

However, once the political parties descend on the ghetto, and once Azaro's dad takes it into his mind to become a boxer, the book gains direction and pace, and becomes a fascinating read. Even the spirits seem to gain more purpose. You finally begin to gain a sense of the strain that poverty places on the family, and the struggles that the country as a whole faces. Perhaps the spirits and magical realism are there to lessen the impact of such a tragic story.

As Azaro's dad fails to make much difference to the country despite his vision his ultimate insight into the reason comes as we near the book's end. "It is not death that human beings are most afraid of, it is love."

Not satisfying - Rated
After a promising opening, I was disappointed with this novel. I realise this is somewhat due to cultural differences, but I found it difficult to care about what happened to the characters. The events are sometimes disconnected and random. That may be the author's point about the lives he is portraying, but every time I put the book down I found it more difficult to pick it up again until I finally stopped reading. I just couldn't connect with this novel. The storyline was too surreal and otherwordly for me.

My six pen'orth - Rated
Like many of the reviewers I agree at times it does feel circular and repetitive (the summary by the Columbian reader 'Azaro goes to Madam Koto's bar, gets scared and runs away' made me laugh) but then much of how we behave in life is the same - our blind, circular behaviour patterns keep counsellors and psychiatrists in business. From a philosophical point of view, anyone who has studied Buddhism will see the parallels. Azaro's Dad literally punches his way to the path to enlightenment. The book made me question what I see and wonder what I can't see, especially in crowded places like the tube. What must it be like to be able to see spirits and auras? If you let yourself go, this book allows you to lose yourself and your own space time continuum will become confused. Hours pass like minutes. And the peripheral element of the politics of poverty is moving. Okri could have written a diatribe about the injustice of third world debt or the iniquity of the luxurious life we live in the West compared to the struggle to survive in poor countries. There's enough everything for everyone. In a Utopian world everyone would share and be content. But he looks at it through the eyes of a child who sees that often when we get what we think we want, we are still discontent, for example his parents argue about how to spend an unexpected windfall, the compound residents fight over free food which turns out to be rotten anyway, grown ups destroy what they can't have. I do think it's one of those books though that if you're not hooked by page 10, you're not going to get into it at all and I can see that a lot of people would not. But for me, I can't wait to read the sequels.

Over-long and repetitive - Rated
There is a sense that Okri wanted to do too many things in this novel and subsequently didn't achieve any of them. Firstly, the whole subject of "the spirit child" seemed out of place with the rest of the story and generally the novel's harsh reality did not mix well with the nods to Nigerian myth throughout the book. Where other authors using magical realism succeed such as Garcia Marquez in One Hundred Years Of Solitude and to a lesser degree De Bernieres's South American trilogy Okri's surrealism doesn't fit, possibly because it does not propel the story anywhere.
The plot itself seemed repetitious and its portrayal of poor African life seemed quite sparse when diluted with nonsensical mysticism. Bessie Head's The Collector of Treasures gives a more direct description of African life and I would suggest that as a better alternative if you are interested in social interaction and clear narrative.
TFR would have been a much less meandering and infuriating book if two hundred pages plus were edited out. As it is TFR is a confusing study of poor Nigerian life and mysticism that the latter will only make sense to those with former knowledge of the subject.

Inspiring, readily captures an active imagination - Rated
I will make this short and sweet, This book invites / requires you to indulge in its poetic language and imagery, you need to isolate yourself and allow your concentration to focus your mind,your reward is you will sink into a magical and disturbing world.
A truly unique writer with an exceptional talent.