The Famished Road by Ben Okri
"The Famished Road" by Ben Okri is a novel centered around the character Azaro, an abiku, or spirit-child, who navigates the dual existence of the human and spiritual realms. Azaro's choice to remain in the world of the living highlights themes of identity and belonging, as he experiences life's complexities, including the struggles of his family and community. The novel employs rich symbolism, particularly through the concept of the "road," which serves as both a literal path for characters and a metaphor for spiritual journeys and societal challenges.
Hunger emerges as a central motif, representing not only the physical deprivation faced by families but also the greed of the powerful and the spiritual longing of a suffering populace. As Azaro interacts with various characters, he encounters both the harsh realities of political corruption and the influence of traditional African beliefs. The narrative illustrates the tension between the old ways of life and the encroachment of modernity, emphasizing the stark contrasts between wealth and poverty, and the resilience of communal bonds amidst adversity.
Through its nonlinear storytelling and incorporation of myth, "The Famished Road" captures the essence of life in an African community on the brink of change, inviting readers to explore its profound themes of suffering, hope, and collective identity. The work is celebrated for its originality and depth, solidifying its place as a significant contribution to modern Nigerian literature.
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The Famished Road by Ben Okri
Excerpted from an article in Magill’s Survey of World Literature, Revised Edition
First published: 1991
Type of work: Novel
The Work
Azaro, the narrator-protagonist of Okri’s Famished Road, is an abiku, or spirit-child, destined to undergo a recurring cycle of birth, early death, and rebirth. Azaro betrays his abiku destiny by choosing to remain among the living when he sees the sad face of his mother. He belongs both to the world of humans and the world of spirits, a double identity that gives him insight into the hidden nature of people and phenomena. Azaro’s double vision is also the vision of the novel: Okri constructs a multidimensional universe in which appearances give way to surprising realities and all things have their spiritual, as well as material, aspects.
The multidimensionality of The Famished Road is apparent in the twin metaphors of its title. The road is one of the novel’s central images, recurring on various levels of narrative structure. Sometimes it is a literal road, where characters travel or lose their way. Sometimes it becomes a mythical creature, the Road King, eternally hungry for victims. It represents the spiritual journeys of the protagonists and the meanderings of the story itself. At times it is a river, echoing the powerful fluidity of the narrative, as well as its characters. Okri’s concept of hunger is similarly flexible. It is the literal hunger of families struggling to survive, but it also is the greed of the powerful, the deprivation of the powerless, and the spiritual yearning of a suffering people. Food is the central currency in the novel’s social and symbolic economy: It is stolen, poisoned, rationed, and withheld, but also shared in moments of familial and communal feasting. Both hunger and the road function in the novel as versatile metamorphic symbols, carrying the text’s structural and philosophical complexity.
Like his symbolism, Okri’s characters are never static. Azaro travels back and forth between waking life and the realm of the spirits, which he traverses in visions and hallucinatory journeys. His father fights political enemies but also supernatural opponents who leave him drifting through strange liminal zones between death and life. Azaro’s mother encounters beings from realms beyond the human during her long days at the market. Madam Koto, a powerful local businesswoman, is rumored to possess magical abilities and is pregnant with spirit-triplets. Drawing on traditional West African mythology, as well as his own nondenominational mysticism, Okri creates a fictional universe that is, at its core, a universe of the spirit. While his characters are subject to harsh political and socioeconomic realities, their battles for survival and dignity are also fought in the realm of dreams, visions, and the imagination.
The importance of dreams in Okri’s fiction goes beyond the private mental life of his subjects. Azaro has the ability to enter and influence the dreams of other characters, as well as understand the unconscious desires of his people. All of the spirit-child’s visionary adventures are played out in the context of the human community, reinforcing the ties that bind Azaro to his nuclear family and neighborhood compound. This emphasis on communal connections is a central feature of The Famished Road, reflecting Okri’s interest in the collective forces that shape contemporary African society. As John Hawley argues, Okri’s work is concerned with the question of collective consciousness, seeking to redefine not only the political but also the aesthetic and spiritual boundaries of colonial oppression.
The oppression experienced by Azaro’s people has many sources: the legacy of colonialism, political corruption, the greed of landlords, lack of will, and the workings of malign spiritual powers. The boy’s story is set against the background of a vicious partisan struggle between the Party of the Poor and the Party of the Rich, whose campaigns mock the ideals of democracy with their hypocrisy, lies, and brutal coercion. While the two parties clash, the inhabitants of Azaro’s compound continue to suffer daily deprivation. The Famished Road offers overwhelmingly powerful images of pain, both mental and physical, perhaps best captured in the figures of the starved, deformed beggars befriended by Azaro’s father. Suffering is a constant presence throughout the narrative, constituting, as Okri confirms in an interview with Jane Wilkinson, one of its most important characters.
The Famished Road is a tale of violent juxtapositions: the rich and the poor, hunger and excess, brutality and tenderness, spirits and humans. Another contrast developed in Okri’s novel is that between a traditional African way of life based on ancient beliefs and values and the encroachment of modernity with its ambiguous blessings. The old order manifests itself in the community’s medicinal practices, ritual blessings, and religious observances. The new order enters with the appearance of electricity and motor vehicles, viewed with a mixture of amazement, envy, and deep suspicion. While some characters, notably Madame Koto, capitalize on these improvements, their main effect on the compound’s inhabitants is a deepening of social contrasts and the reinforcement of preexisting power structures.
Okri’s epic narrative offers an account of life in an African neighborhood on the eve of national independence, mapping its tensions and crises, as well as its moments of grace: the warmth of family meals, the love of Azaro’s parents, the pleasures of storytelling. The novel’s structure departs from Western literary conventions, turning to the oral narrative tradition for its nonlinear, recursive, and highly symbolic patterns. This combination of the mythical and the historical gives The Famished Road its richness and originality, qualities that inspired worldwide admiration and established the novel’s status as a classic of modern Nigerian literature.
Sources for Further Study
Chicago Tribune. June 14, 1992, XIV, p. 1.
The Christian Science Monitor. July 10, 1992, p. 10.
Essence. XXIII, September, 1992, p. 58.
The Guardian. October 4, 1991, p. 23.
Los Angeles Times. June 8, 1992, p. E6.
The Nation. CCLV, August 3, 1992, p. 146.
New Statesman and Society. IV, March 22, 1991, p. 44.
The New York Times Book Review. XCVII, June 28, 1992, p. 3.
The Observer. October 21, 1991, p. 61.
Publishers Weekly. CCXXXIX, March 30, 1992, p. 87.
The Times Literary Supplement. April 19, 1991, p. 22.
The Washington Post Book World. XXII, May 24, 1992, p. 1.