Book description
As one of Britain's foremost poets, Ben Okri is rightly acclaimed for
his use of language. And as a Booker Prize winning novelist, this
skill was shown to particular effect in both Starbook (his most
recent work) and in The Famished Road.
In Tales of Freedom he brings both poetry and story together
in a fascinating new form, using writing and image pared down to their
essentials, where haiku and story meet. Thus we discover Pinprop, the
slave to an old couple lost in a clearing, who holds the keys to the
universe in his quirky hands. Then there is the beautifully dressed
black Russian on the train, helping to film a new version of 'Eugene
Onegin'. Later, in the chaos of the aftermath of war, orphaned
children paint mysterious shapes of bulls, birds, hybrid creatures,
and we wonder if grief has unhinged them into genius...And who is that
woman, who hardly speaks, who presses a tiny flower into the palm of
the young boy on the bus, and then leaves his life forever?
Tales of Freedom offers a haunting necklace of images which
flash and sparkle as the light shines on them. Quick and stimulating
to read, but slowly burning in the memory, they offer a different,
more transcendent way of looking at our extreme, gritty world - and
show the wealth of freedom that's available beyond the confines of our
usual perceptions.
Ben Okri has published 8 novels, including
The Famished Road
and
Starbook
, as well as collections of poetry, short stories and essays. His work
has been translated into more than 20 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.
