Ben Okri - The Famished Road

This is Ben Okri's 1991 Man Booker Prize Winning Novel. It has a sequel titled Songs of Enchantment.

1.We disliked the rigours of existence, the unfulfilled longings, the enshrined injustices of the world,, the labyrinths of love, the ignorance of parents, the fact of dying, and the amazing indifference of the Living in the midst of the simple beauties of the universe.

2.We feared the heartlessness of human beings, all of whom are born blind, few of whom ever learn to see.

3.So much of the dust of living was in me.

4.When it was so dark that one couldn't see the far corners of the sky and the forest lacked all definition...

5.He put his hand on my head and, with the voice of a sad giant, he said:

6."I fight fire and become fire. Anyone who fights me fights the sun."

7."I fell into mud," said Dad. "I was coming down the road, drinking, singing, and then the road said to me: 'Watch yourself.' So I abused the road. Then it turned into a river and i swam. It changed into fire and i sweated. It transformed into a tiger, and i killed it with one blow. And then it shrunk into a big rat and i shouted at it and it ran, like the creditors. And then it dissolved into mud, and I lost my shoe. If I had money I would be a great man."

8.He did not sit down but stood regarding the chair as if it were an enemy.

9.He slept with his suffering still on his face.

10.He went around with a strange enw air of myth about him, as if he had conceived heroic roles for himself during the short time he had been away.

11.Even the dead played with my name that night.

12.Mum was alone in the room, praying to our ancestors and to God in three different languages.

13.And for the first time isaw how the world had sharpened her features.

14."Your father is going to become a world champion."

15."My son," he said, gently, "there is a wonderful wind blowing in my mind. I drank the moon tonight. The stars are playing on a flute. The air is sweet with the music of an invisible genius. Love is crying in my flesh, singing strange songs. The rain is full of flowers and their scent makes me tremnble as if I am becoming a real man. I see great happiness in our future. I see joy. I see you waling out of the sun. I see gold in your eyes. Your flesh glitters with the dust of diamonds. I see your mother as the most beautiful woman in the world."

16.The ocean is full of songs.

17.I was lightning-struck by life.

18.When they left, my brain fairly combusted with the realities they had conjured in low voices.

19.They glowed with an almost spectral radiance.

20.I wanted to see the world again.

21.Later i heard them moving and whispering, moving and shaking the floor, as if they were in a hurry to fill the world with glories.

22."To be a man is not a small thing," he would say to me.

23.He always fought several imaginary foes, as if the world were against him.

24."Black Tyger, USE YOUR POWER!" I cried.

25.For three days Mum prayed on borrowed wine.