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From Booklist Nigerian novelist Okri's last book, The Famished Road, won the 1991 Booker Prize; his newest picks up where it left off. Once again we're bedazzled and bedeviled by Okri's phantasmagoric prose and the strange and wondrous sensibility of Azaro, a spirit-child living in a poor African village. The only child of a street hawker and a laborer, Azaro is possessed of, or by, an immense and... More

From Booklist Nigerian novelist Okri's last book, The Famished Road, won the 1991 Booker Prize; his newest picks up where it left off. Once again we're bedazzled and bedeviled by Okri's phantasmagoric prose and the strange and wondrous sensibility of Azaro, a spirit-child living in a poor African village. The only child of a street hawker and a laborer, Azaro is possessed of, or by, an immense and unwieldy intelligence and is routinely overwhelmed by bewildering visions and revelations. His parents also dwell in this enigmatic extra dimension. When they have a falling out, both are sucked into realms full of supernatural menace and cosmic information. Azaro's father is enthralled by a crazy-eyed but graceful beggar girl, while his mother joins the followers of a witchy tavern owner named Madame Koto. As each family member wages his or her own mysterious hallucinatory battles, we recognize that all this strife and upheaval is connected to the stratifications of class warfare and the machinations of political power struggles. This is a feverish and confounding work, a great boil of prophecies and aphorisms, dreams and myths. Donna Seaman

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