The Famished Road Book + PRICE WATCH * Amazon pricing is not included in price watch

The Famished Road Book

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. EllisRead More

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  • Amazon

    Azario is a spirit child who is born to live for a short while before returning to the idyllic world of his spirit companions. Now he has chosen to stay in the world of the living. Combining fantasy and the vision of a child, the supernatural and the here-and-now, this novel conveys the Nigerian peasant life in the changing world.

  • Foyles

    Winner of the Booker Prize 1991 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. He is born into a world of poverty, ignorance and injustice, but Azaro awakens with a smile on his face. 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.

  • BookDepository

    The Famished Road : Paperback : Vintage Publishing : 9780099929307 : : 27 Jul 1992 : 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.

  • Blackwell

    He is born into a world of poverty, ignorance and injustice, but Azaro awakens with a smile on his face. Despite belonging to a spirit world made of enchantment, where there is no suffering, Azaro chooses to stay in the land of the Living...

  • Waterstones

    Azaro is a spirit child who is born only to live for a short while before returning to the idyllic world of his spirit companions. Now he has chosen to stay in the world of the living.

  • 0099929309
  • 9780099929307
  • Ben Okri
  • 6 February 1992
  • Vintage
  • Paperback (Book)
  • 592
  • New Ed
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