Songs of Enchantment [Paperback] [Jan 01, 1994] Ben Okri (The Famished Road Trilogy) - Softcover

OKRI,BEN

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0099218712 ISBN 13: 9780099218715

Publisher: Vintage, 1994

Synopsis

Triumphant...a joyful and entertaining read (Guardian)"Passages of extraordinary beauty... Okri paints a convincing surrealist picture" (Sunday Times)"Reading Okri felt to me like talking to someone who has a secret" (New Statesman)"Ben Okri writes beautifully... a triumph of inspiration over the everyday. His prose is dense with pungent metaphor, sometimes whimsical, sometimes bawdy... fraught with wild visions" (The Times)"A love story and an account of the conflict between the parties of the rich and the poor... Okri's voice is all his own" (Independent) One great thought can change the dreams of the world. One great action, lived out all the way to the sea, can change the history of the world. The adventures of Azaro, the spirit child, continue. From the bestselling author of The Famished Road comes this radiant sequel.

About this title

From the Publisher:

In this sequel to his Booker Prize-winning novel The Famished Road, Ben Okri has crafted a wonderfully original novel that still retains all the elements of his earlier success. Songs Of Enchantment continues the story of the spirit-child Azaro, the impoverished young narrator of The Famished Road. Azaro is a reluctant but keen observer of the harsh reality that encompasses his village and his world. His mother leaves his family, caught up in the grip of the mysterious and demonic tavern owner Madame Koto. Black Tyger, Azaro's father, is also drawn away, but his temptation comes as forbidden visions of a beautiful beggar girl. And underlying such personal turmoil are the political convulsions that continually wrack the countryside, as mass upheavals and dreamlike battles embody the struggle of a new African nation. As in The Famished Road, Songs Of Enchantment is strongly grounded in Azaro's shimmering consciousness, gentle narration, and hallucinatory visions. It is here, in his own thoughts, that Azaro finds the strength to survive his difficult world. It is here, too, that Ben Okri demonstrates the extraordinary powers of his craft. With mesmerizing prose reminiscent of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and a remarkable sensitivity to the inner lives of his characters, Songs Of Enchantment testifies to Ben Okri's well-deserved place at the forefront of contemporary novelists.

"Shares the earlier book's spirit of stoic joy and playful invention...A harrowing extension of a remarkable terrain."--Atlanta Constitution.

"The wonder of Songs Of Enchantment (evident, above all, in Okri's extraordinary imagery and language) is that it carries on so richly the saga of nation building...."--Chicago Tribune.

From Kirkus Reviews:

A sequel to the Booker Prize-winning The Famished Road (1992)- -again set in a mythic African village besieged by corruption and malevolent spirits--once more celebrates the stalwart human heart's struggle to endure. Azaro, the spirit-child who defied his fellow spirits by refusing to die, continues the story of his family. His father had won a great fight, but, as Azaro reminds us, ``nothing is ever finished, struggles are never truly concluded, sometimes we have to re-dream our lives, and life can always be used to create life.'' Ahead of the family lie the invisible seven mountains of the family's destiny, and all they can do is struggle forward to reach beyond the chaos that now engulfs them. Azaro's mother has been bewitched by the mysterious, all-powerful Madame Koto, who owns a bar in the village. It is a place always undergoing ``fabulous mutations,'' where every day is a celebration, ``an affirmation of her legend.'' Azaro and his father eventually get the mother back- -but she seems changed, weighed down by the many disasters that threaten the village: a murdered man haunts the streets; a ``Jackal-headed Masquerade'' riding a white horse briefly takes over and establishes ``its kingdom of fear''; Madame Koto becomes a dread invisible presence that saps all vitality; women are turned into antelopes; Azaro's father is blinded; and politicians court the villagers with poisoned foods. The times are very much out of joint--a point overly belabored in too many evocations of evil--but Azaro's father regains his sight in a healing that is as much of the spirit as the eyes themselves, and Azaro has his own epiphany when he sees the possibility of serenity beyond the present chaos. 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. At times repetitive, but stunning nonetheless. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0099218712
• ISBN 13: 9780099218715
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 304