The Famished Road by Ben Okri

This is one of the most unusual books I have ever read.

Azaro is a spirit child, born to stay on earth only a short time before returning to an idyllic spirit world, but the vision of his mother's love as shown on her face convinces him to stay alive, despite the enticements of spirits who are constantly luring him to return to them. The place is an unnamed African country (the author is Nigerian), and the time is just as the country is trying to move out of its tribal background into the modern world.

Azaro and his family live in the direst poverty, coexisting in their one room with insects, lizards, and rats. Okri mixes accounts of the deprivation and violence of the family's daily life with flights of dreamlike encounters with the world of myth and superstition. Often the "real" world and the spirit world blend so seamlessly that it is hard for the reader to know which is which. This is a work of magical realism carried to the extreme, perhaps reflecting a culture in which the fantastical is an accepted part of everyday existence.

The language of the story is in turns brutal and beautiful. However, without any background of knowledge about Nigerian fable and mythology, I often grew weary at the pages and pages of excursions into the spirit world, as they often seemed to me to be repetitive and essentially meaningless, despite being very visually presented.

Sometimes, though, the magical visions give clues as to the meaning of the novel, especially as Azaro witnesses the building of a road which is never completed, but is destroyed and began again time after time, new improvements added each time by new builders. I believe he is commenting about the fact that human civilizations build and then are destroyed, but that they are followed by new civilizations that begin again, trying to do it better. This theory is complemented by the last sentence of the book, which puts many facets of the story into perspective. (If you read this book, don't dare look ahead. You will destroy the delight of discovery).

I found this book to be too long, and at no time was I transported, as I have been by other books of magical realism. But it was very interesting.

This is a winner of England's Man Booker Prize.