Astonishing the Gods (13 page)

‘You cannot fault Okri for confronting the big issues and asking questions of our secular age that few of his contemporaries have the innocence and bravery to attempt.'
The Observer

‘Arresting and evocative.'
Times Literary Supplement

‘Okri has chosen a big and bold subject and a highly original approach to it.'
Herald

‘The journey has inspired writers from Homer to Chaucer onwards… Okri gives it an ultra-modern twist.'
Daily Mail

‘A riddling quest for enlightenment.'
Independent

B
EN
O
KRI
has published many books, including
The Famished Road
, which won the Booker Prize in 1991. His work has been translated into 26 languages and has won numerous international prizes including the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Africa, the
Paris Review
Aga Khan Prize for Fiction, the Chianti Ruffino Antico Fattore International Literary Prize and the Premio Grinzane Cavour Prize.

The recipient of many honorary doctorates, he is a vice-president of the English Centre of International PEN and was presented with the Crystal Award by the World Economic Forum for his outstanding contribution to the Arts and cross-cultural understanding in 1995.

He has been a Fellow Commoner in Creative Arts at Trinity College, Cambridge and is an honorary fellow of Mansfield College, Oxford. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature since 1997, he was awarded an OBE in 2001.

He was born in Nigeria, and lives in London.

Fiction

The Age of Magic

‘The Age of Magic has begun.
Unveil your eyes.'

Eight weary film-makers, travelling from Paris to Basel, arrive at a small Swiss hotel on the shores of a luminous lake. Above them, strewn with lights that twinkle in the darkness, looms the towering Rigi mountain. Over the course of three days and two nights, the travellers will find themselves drawn in to the mystery of the mountain reflected in the lake. One by one, they will be disturbed, enlightened, and transformed, each in a different way.

An intoxicating and dreamlike tale unfolds. Allow yourself to be transformed. Having shown a different way of seeing the world, Ben Okri now offers a different way of reading.

The Age of Magic
is available
here
.

Dangerous Love

An epic of daily life,
Dangerous Love
is a story of doomed love, of star-crossed lovers, separated not by their families, but by the very circumstances of their lives.

Omovo, a Nigerian office-worker and artist who lives at home with his father and his father's second wife. In the world of the compound in which he lives, Omovo has many friends and some enemies, but most important of all there is Ifeyiwa, a beautiful young married woman whom he loves with an almost hopeless passion - not because she doesn't return his love, but because they can never be together.

Dangerous Love
is available
here
.

In Arcadia

A group of angry and ill-assorted people accept an invitation to make a journey. Inspired by a painting and financed by a mysterious benefactor, they set off to discover the real Arcadia. Or what remains of it.

Their journey begins in ignorance and chaos at Waterloo station and takes them through superstition and myth to harmony. In the Louvre, in front of Poussin's masterpiece, they begin to understand.

I
n Arcadia
is available
here
.

Essays

A Way of Being Free

Twelve of Ben Okri's most controversial non-fiction pieces form this collection on the theme of freedom, ranging from the personal to the analytical, including a meditation on the role of the poet, a study of Picasso's Minotaur, a paean to human freedom in honour of Salman Rushdie, and an appraisal of fellow-Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe. Lyrically imaginative and provocative,
A Way of Being Free
confirms Okri's place as one of the most inspiring of contemporary writers.

A Way of Being Free
is available
here
.

Other Fiction

Flowers and Shadows

The Landscapes Within

Incidents at the Shrine

Stars of the New Curfew

The Famished Road

Songs of Enchantment

Infinite Riches

Starbook

Tales of Freedom

The Age of Magic

Other essays

Birds of Heaven

A Time for New Dreams

Poetry

An African Elegy

Mental Fight

Wild

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The story starts here.

First published in the UK in 1995 by Phoenix House.

This eBook edition first published in the UK in 2014 by Head of Zeus Ltd.

Copyright © Ben Okri, 1995

Jacket design: Leo Nickolls

The moral right of Ben Okri to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.