Reviews

• バカンスが取れない人にお薦め

  最初のページを読んでくらっと来て、一人で静かなところで読みたくなったら、あなたは、この本に向いています。人によっては、途中で眠くなったり飽きたりすると思います。私にとっては目が眩むような凄い本でした。大変平易な英語で、大変ゆったりと話が進みます。というか、話というほどの筋書きはなく、毎日の生活が綿密に描かれて行きます。 何が良いかというと、パワーと太陽です。本のページは白黒のはずですが、この本は全頁が、極彩色に陽光が燦々と注ぐ熱帯写真集だったように感じられます。舞台は熱帯のスラムですから、きれいな場面ばかりではありませんが、強烈な陽光を公平に浴びて、熱帯に育つ貧乏のどん底の人々の、理屈ではわけのわからんパワーに圧倒され、なんだかわからないけど、この世に太陽がある限り生きていこう、という気持ちにさせられてしまいます。コンクリートジャングルに疲れているけれど、バカンスが取れない人にお薦めします。

• Very good customer service

• Ben Okri describes life from the eyes of a special boy in a very poor family of three in West Africa before the wide-spread introduction of electricity. They are starving. The boy is always on the brink of starvation. Although scarcity of food is a an issue in the book starvation is never mentioned, only in the title. Try to fast and see what happens. After a day or two you'll start to hallucinate slightly. Perhaps just flashes of light and slight movements of otherwise stable objects. More fasting, more visual disturbances. Real starvation, I imagine, could easily blur the limit between dream and awake and, viola, you'll have what is described in this book. A dream world seen from the point of view of an African kid. The book could read as mythology but it isn't. It is from the place of origin of myth. The novel is original. I can't record having read anything like it. The closest must be the tales of Carlos Castaneda. Moreover, it's entertaining. The boy's over-energetic father supplies the novel with a real-life practical story in a historic frame. And I found him a really funny character. It is surprising how convincing the story is told.

• A feast of beauty, love, and joy. Every page is a poem. The best book I have ever read. Reading this book made me feel so exultant---it affirmed everything I believe, that love and beauty and joy are the reasons for living---that I handed out copies to everyone I knew who enjoyed reading (it's a long book, and not an "easy" read, but the language is exquisite). I was so filled with joy that I wanted them to share it, too. Then the weirdest thing happened: THE BOOK ACTS AS A MIRROR. It strongly moved everyone who read it, but apparently you take from it what you bring to it. I don't know how this magic works, but it seems that the message you respond to in the book is the message that your soul is attuned to. My environmentalist friend, for instance, was appalled at the destruction of the land; she saw nothing beautiful in the book. The friend who'd lost her mother was so moved by emotion about mothers and children that she took to bed for two days. The adoption-agency friend was angry about the plight of the children. The egocentric friend never saw any further than the surface of the plot line about power. The friend who tends toward the paranoid talked for weeks about alternate motivations for the characters. The adventurer friend was inspired to visit Africa again. And on and on. I couldn't believe it. What I had thought was a beautiful, heart-filling affirmation of love and beauty and joy in the everyday, no matter what the circumstances, turned out to be a message only I was hearing. The book seems to reveal or affirm its readers' personalities in ways I and they didn't expect. I've reread The Famished Road several times now, and it still resonates as strongly as the first time, from the very first line. One quick excerpt to give you the flavor: "My son, there is a wonderful wind blowing in my mind. I drank the moon tonight. The stars are playing on a flute. The air is sweet with the music of an invisible genius. Love is crying in my flesh, singing strange songs. The rain is full of flowers and their scent makes me tremble as if I am becoming a real man. I see great happiness in our future. I see joy. I see you walking out of the sun. I see gold in your eyes. Your flesh glitters with the dust of diamonds. I see your mother as the most beautiful woman in the world." This book is so rich with hope and so full of beauty that it makes me weep. Ben Okri, you are a genius. Thank you.

• One of my favourite books. Amazing! Hauntingly beautiful. Book arrived slightly damaged with first 50 pages damaged by damp. Can't be bothered to send it back, but thought I would signal the damage.

• Um dos livros mais bonitos que já li, com uma narrativa que prende o leitor. Ben Okri desenvolve uma prosa poética fantástica que segue a linha da literatura clássica nigeriana, com influências de Daniel Fagunwe, Amos Tutuola, trazendo de forma sensacional as fricções de modernidade e tradição africana, sob um olhar espiritualizado e místico. One of the most beautiful books I've read, it is a gripping narrative. Ben Okri develops a fantastic poetic prose that carries the influences of classic nigerian literature, bringing influences from Daniel Fagunwe and Amos Tutuola. The author evokes in sensational fashion the frictions between modernity and african tradition, under a spiritualized and mystic gaze.

Purchase links