Book Review — The Famished Road by Ben Okri

Some books are best described not as stories but as states of being. In this context, it means that you don’t just read them, you live inside their logic. Ben Okri’s “The Famished Road” of spirit children, drunken brawls, market riots, and hallucinatory visions is exactly that sort of book.

Published in 1991 and winner of the Booker Prize that year, “The Famished Road’” is the story of Azaro, a young abiku (a spirit child) who, unlike others of his kind, decides to stay in the world of the living. In Okri’s telling, that “world of the living” is less solid than you’d think. Streets melt into rivers, creditors shrink into rats, men sprout wings or fangs at will, and entire city blocks appear to teeter between spirit and flesh.

“It’s not merely that the road is hungry,” Okri writes, “it’s that the world devours itself.” This novel’s opening line, “In the beginning there was a river. The river became a road and the road branched out to the whole world…”, which some have said is one of the most unforgettable opening lines of a book, sets the tone for the shape-shifting surrealism that defines every page. Okri’s Nigeria is equal parts realist and phantasmagoric: a political mess swirling with hustlers, politicians, beggars, prophets, drunks, and spirits.

It’s no wonder Azaro, our narrator, is always asking ‘why’? Why does his father fight everybody? Why does his mother keep loving him even though he brings them so much pain? Why are they so enmeshed in poverty? Why do the spirits keep calling him back? Every conversation is only a matter of when the ‘Why’ will come raining down.

Some passages are so gorgeously weird that they seem like word paintings. One minute Azaro sees men dancing with “political erections” (what does that even mean?), the next minute a woman’s clothes are so dazzling they make beggars ill. What kind of a ridiculous creative license is this? It’s absurd and poetic in equal measure.

That’s why I told someone that if they need a neat plot, they look elsewhere. “The Famished Road” is more fable than novel, and Okri uses every ounce of his creative license to blur reality. Open a page at random, and you might find Azaro watching men walking upside down with baskets of fish strapped to their feet, or babies with three arms selling charms at a crossroads.

At times, Okri’s creativity is thrilling, like watching a fireworks display in slow motion. A favourite passage of mine is when a drunk boasts to Azaro about how the road turned into a river, then a fire, then a tiger, then a rat, all in one drunken rant. What on earth does it mean? Who cares. You just roll with it. I must not forget to add that I used one of the fables to craft a story for my girls on one of those nights they would not allow me rest. And you know what, they loved it.

If there is any thread that holds the delirium together, it’s Azaro’s family, especially his father, whose constant battles with poverty are the emotional anchor of the book. The father’s rants about injustice, and his big dreams to become a boxer or a politician give the novel its occasional flashes of raw, grounded humanity.

The book truly comes alive during the fights. And bless your heart if you can get there because the first 50 pages are stoically anti-reading. But once you get pass the 80th page and find yourself in the fights, the odds are that you will forget the unreadable beginning. There’s a physicality in those scenes that feels cinematic: brawls break out in smoky bars, street riots erupt into chaos, and Azaro’s father becomes an unstoppable force of nature, a man wrestling spirits and thugs with equal fury. Whenever fists fly, Okri’s prose gains teeth. Those were the delightful highlights of the book for me.

Also: Ogogoro. Always the Ogogoro. No matter if it’s a funeral, a wedding, a birth, a fight, a naming ceremony, there’s always cheap gin flowing somewhere.

Characters drift in and out like ghosts in a dream. Madam Koto, the woman who is part witch, part entrepreneur, is perhaps the most intriguing of Okri’s epileptic characters. She gives Azaro money, feeds him, shelters him, gives the priest who was raining curses on her an umbrella as rain came pouring down on him. She’s kind, then sinister, then kind again. It’s never clear what she wants, but her tavern is always there, a crossroads for the living and the dead.

But then again, continuity is not this novel’s strength. More than once, Okri tells us it’s the “last time” Azaro’s family will see Madam Koto. Yet she pops back up like nothing happened. The same goes for the photographer Jeremiah, who’s given a final farewell only to reappear snapping photos. You get the sense that Okri is improvising as he goes, not always tidily.

For all its darkness, ‘The Famished Road’ has a sly, irreverent humour. Azaro’s constant questions often break the tension. There’s the moment when Jeremiah the photographer whines about the cost of photographing the poor “it is expensive taking pictures of poor people!” LOL, or when some drunk herbalist tries to convince Madam Koto that her car would be a coffin unless he gives him some money. These moments lighten the hallucinatory gloom.

If the book has one true failing, it’s that Okri doesn’t know when to stop. Some pages feel like he’s stuck on repeat: spirits beckon, Azaro refuses; Dad fights, Mum weeps, politicians promise, creditors come knocking. Then the whole loop begins again. By the time you’ve slogged past page 200, it’s easy to wonder if Okri himself got lost in his own labyrinth. Okri stopped when you got to 500 but you get the feeling that he could have done 2000 just repeating the same things in different ways.

And when the ending does come, of course it came in a sudden rush and makes you feel oddly unfinished. In your mind, you can predict that Okri just got tired and asks the reader to imagine whatever is left. For instance, what happened to the money Azaro’s father won off Sammy? Who knows. The narrative spills over so many edges that it never truly lands.

When I first mentioned I was reading ‘The Famished Road’, my friends split into two camps: “Worst book I’ve ever read,” said some. “One of the greatest,” said others.
I understand both reactions. The novel’s ambition is undeniable: a portrait of Nigeria as an unending struggle between the living and the spirit world. Its images stick with you long after you close it. There are the blind beggars, the drifting masquerades, the burning compound, the ever-hungry road.

But is this book great? Personally, I think it’s a book best felt rather than understood. Its flaws, including the loops, the lack of discipline, the immoderate creative license, and contradictions, are baked into its spirit. Maybe that’s why the Booker judges loved it. The uninitiated will never feel the spirit, or will they?

For me, I am glad I am done with this.

“IN THE BEGINNING there was a river. The river became a road and the road branched out to the whole world. And because the road was once a river it was always hungry.”

Great opening line!