Stars of the New Curfew - Hardcover

Okri, Ben

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670825204 ISBN 13: 9780670825202

Publisher: Viking Adult, 1989

Synopsis

A collection of six stories set in the streets of Lagos and the jungles of Nigeria depict the wide-ranging efforts to survive in the face of terror

About this title

About the Author:

Ben Okri has published 8 novels, including The Famished Road, as well as collections of poetry, short stories and essays. His work has been translated into more than twenty languages. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and has been awarded the OBE as well as numerous international prizes, including the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Africa, the Aga Khan Prize for Fiction and the Chianti Rufino-Antico Fattore. He is a Vice-President of the English Centre of International PEN and was presented with a Crystal Award by the World Economic Forum. He was born in Nigeria and lives in London.

From Publishers Weekly:

The central theme in this brilliant collection of African short stories is the difficulty of standing one's ground in a world where superstition, poverty and irresponsible use of power combine to destroy effective social bonds. In the title piece, an unholy mix of alcohol, oil of marijuana and chloroform called Power-Drug causes a bus crash and the deaths of seven people. Conscience-stricken, the nostrum seller who unwittingly caused the disaster flees to his old village for refuge and consolation. But there he is caught up and nearly killed in a power struggle between the town's two richest men. Back in the city, he reflects that there are few consolations for a decent man--perhaps after all the only way to survive in his country is to seek the protection of the powerful. Other stories deal with wanton destruction caused by unbridled military power, a love affair gone wrong and the passage of a palm tapper into the hereafter and back again. Okri, winner of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Africa and the Paris Review Aga Khan prize for fiction, writes beautiful, dense prose. He is a modernist author, moving freely from realism to surrealism, but his work is consistently accessible, and remarkably effective.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Viking Adult
• Publication date: 1989
• ISBN 10: 0670825204
• ISBN 13: 9780670825202
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 208