Book name : The famished road
Author : Ben Okri
Genre : Magical realism
This Booker prize winner has a little African boy -Azaro as the protagonist and his world makes up the story. He is a spirit child, who can see both the worlds - the spirited and the living. Let me tell you right away - it is not spooky! The prose is akin to poetry - that is the closest I can get to like poetry! :P There are so many twists and turns that keeps the reader interested in the book. Majorly a page turner for me, except where the boy goes into elaborate descriptions of the spirits!
There are times when you find the boy's imagination is far from the logical worlds that the adults live in, but then if you cannot get a peek into worlds and imaginations of a different kind than the one you do exist in, why read at all?!
There are times when the he comes in contact with the realities of adults - like when he finds out the work conditions of his parents and how they are struggling to earn a living - the innocence of the narration through the his eyes makes for a heart-wrenching read. Intense. You would want to pick him up and hug him.
But since the narrator is a boy, the tone gets happier in a while! :)
When I read the first few lines of the book, I could not resist to keep it back. Check it out...
Excerpts from the book :
1.The book begins like this -
"IN THE BEGINNING there was a river. The river became a road and the road branched out to
the whole world. And because the road was once a river it was always hungry."
2. "It took longer to get far into the forest. It seemed that the trees, feeling that they were losing the
argument with human beings, had simply walked deeper into the forest."
3. "Bridges were being built; flyovers, half-finished, were like passageways into the air, or like future visions of a time when cars would be able to fly.."
------
Well, if you like this genre, this is a good read. Happy reading! :)
Author : Ben Okri
Genre : Magical realism
This Booker prize winner has a little African boy -Azaro as the protagonist and his world makes up the story. He is a spirit child, who can see both the worlds - the spirited and the living. Let me tell you right away - it is not spooky! The prose is akin to poetry - that is the closest I can get to like poetry! :P There are so many twists and turns that keeps the reader interested in the book. Majorly a page turner for me, except where the boy goes into elaborate descriptions of the spirits!
There are times when you find the boy's imagination is far from the logical worlds that the adults live in, but then if you cannot get a peek into worlds and imaginations of a different kind than the one you do exist in, why read at all?!
There are times when the he comes in contact with the realities of adults - like when he finds out the work conditions of his parents and how they are struggling to earn a living - the innocence of the narration through the his eyes makes for a heart-wrenching read. Intense. You would want to pick him up and hug him.
But since the narrator is a boy, the tone gets happier in a while! :)
When I read the first few lines of the book, I could not resist to keep it back. Check it out...
Excerpts from the book :
1.The book begins like this -
"IN THE BEGINNING there was a river. The river became a road and the road branched out to
the whole world. And because the road was once a river it was always hungry."
2. "It took longer to get far into the forest. It seemed that the trees, feeling that they were losing the
argument with human beings, had simply walked deeper into the forest."
3. "Bridges were being built; flyovers, half-finished, were like passageways into the air, or like future visions of a time when cars would be able to fly.."
------
Well, if you like this genre, this is a good read. Happy reading! :)
