When Ben Okri published his Booker Prize winning novel The Famished Road for the first time, readers in the UK and the world was shocked to know how a person can see spirits, how a person can slide into the realm of spirits. For most people raised in Euro-american settings, such realm as the realm of spirit is a news. However, through The Famished Road, Ben Okri “campaign” the existence of such realm, at least, in the eyes of African people—well, actually not only African, but also Asian people, or more exactly, Southeast Asian people.
In The Famished Road, Okri tells about a boy named Azaro who finally realized how actually he is an ‘abiku’. In Nigerian belief, an abiku is a ‘childish’ spirit who likes being born to a mother only to die while still very young and later chooses to be born again, still to the same mother, and only to die while still very young. Continue reading »
