Ben Okri has long been one of my very favorite writers, not only for his award-winning trilogy The Famished Road, Songs of Enchantment, and Infinite Riches (which are among the finest works of mythic fiction ever written), but also for his many other gorgeous novels, short stories, and poetry collections. Okri's latest, Starbook, is another novel that belongs on every mythic fiction fan's shelf. It's a smart, sharp adult fairy tale set in a vivid mythical landcape -- a novel rooted in ancestor mythology, art, history, and the dark story of the African slave trade. "There's a lot about the past that we can't know except by stories," says the author. "If these are not passed on, how can we understand who we are, and what we can become? ...One has to read the clues of what seems to be lost, in art, artefacts, intuitions, dreams. The artist is a conduit through which lost things are recovered."
Okri's own life has a fairy tale quality (if one speaks of the old, dark versions of fairy tales and not Walt Disney's bloodless re-tellings) -- a life rich in moments of tragedy, triumph, and personal transformation. Born in northern Nigeria, Okri and his family lived in England until the boy was seven and then returned to Africa, where he witnessed the civil upheavals and horrors of the Biafra War first-hand. As a young man, a government grant sent him back to England to study Literature -- but when his grant dried up, he found himself living rough on the streets of London. In a Guardian interview, Okri explained the pact he made with himself during that troubled time: "It seems you have nothing - no money, no friends...But at the edge of the abyss, you find you have a choice; that life isn't a given, it's a choosing." He willed himself to keep writing, and by 21 had published his first novel. By 32 he had won the Booker prize." (I recommend reading the full Guardian interview, by Maya Jaggi, which is fascinating.)
Although Okri writes in English, his work is strongly influenced by Yoruban mythology, oral folk tales and spiritual beliefs. His father, a Christian preacher, "re-embraced the religion of his ancestors and became an animist. It made me see that Africa can't be looked at truthfully through an external ideology. You can't wander through the marketplace without noticing both the market women and the goddesses they believe in." This was, says Okri, a "seriously revolutionary moment in my life - though it took time to filter through. I realised you cannot evoke a place truly till you find a tone, a narrative, in tune with the dimensions of that place. You can't use Jane Austen to tell stories about Africa."
Starbook is not yet published in America, but the British edition is available here. If you're new to Okri's work, also be sure to pick up The Famished Road, his Booker Prize winner. For more mythic fiction in the Yoruban tradition, try The Palm-Wine Drinkard and My Life in the Bush of Ghosts by the late, great Amos Tutuola. For Yoruban myth, I particularly recommend Yoruba Trickster Tales by Oyekan Owomoyela.
'The Famished Road' completely and utterly blew me away when I read it (not long after it came out). I confess to not being a particular follower of fantasy-type works but I found that to be a soaring and hugely innovative work, so much so, that I promptly bought about 6 copies and farmed them out to people I thought would agree. And they did. It still has a profound affect upon me whenever something comes in relation to Ghana or even just Africa comes - that notion of lives lived on the cusp of the spirit world. Truly astonishing.
Posted by: peacay | August 28, 2007 at 10:53 PM
And when I said Ghana...you just know I meant Nigeria.
Posted by: peacay | August 29, 2007 at 07:30 AM