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Infinite Riches (Phoenix, 1998; 394) is the last book of Ben Okri's trilogy that begins with The Famished Road .  I postponed reading this particular book since in 2009 because I wanted to read them chronologically. I was serendipitously gifted with the first book but could not get the second - Songs of Enchantment -  so finally I had to succumb and skip it. Infinite Riches  continues the story of Azaro, the abiku child who sees into the spirit world and do fantastic things. Also, the struggle between the political parties - the Party of the Rich and the Party of the Poor - over who to take the mantle of power once the colonialists has granted the colony its independence continues unabated. Herein lies the nefarious activities of the political elite; the brutality of the people by both the police and thugs of the political parties; the discrimination of the people by the people and the parties; and the humongous corruption of the political arrivistes against the be...

Time is growing ... And our suffering is growing too. When will our suffering bear fruit? One great thought can alter the future of the world. One revelation. One dream. But who will dream that dream? And who will make it real? [5] Some people who are born don't want to live. Others who are dead do't want to die. [6] Another insisted justice was an idea invented by the big crooks who run the world, an idea designed to keep small people in their corners. [26] His ears were so wounded that he heard the language of his blood in the beating heart of the prison walls. His eyes hurt so much that he saw shapes hovering between the metal bars. Angel or demon, spirit or ancestor, he couldn't be sure. [46] [F]ame is often devourer of the best things in our spirit. [88] Every mood is a story, and every story becomes a mood. [153] It is only when the diverse peoples of the earth meet and learn from and love one another that we can begin to get an inkling of thi...

Title: The Famished Road* Author: Ben Okri Genre: Fiction/Surrealist Publishers: Vintage Pages: 500 Year of First Publication: 1991 Country: Nigeria Ben Okri's The Famished Road  entrenches the writer's style of mixing what others might refer to as surrealism with realism. Like the stories in his collected short stories Incidents at the Shrine , Okri capitalises on the African's abundant belief in the spiritual world, or supernatural, to tell his stories, presenting the reader with a cascade of fantastic images and challenging descriptions. To the African the spirit world is not far off from or diametrical to the physical world; the African believes in the fluidity between the two and believes that children come from the spirit world, just as people go to the spirit world when they die. In effect, the African believes that the world we live in now, the one we see and feel, which could be referred to as the physical world, is just a transit in that infinit...

His mind had been unhinged by the blast of detonators, nights spent with corpses and by the superstitious incredulity of having killed so many white men. [33] "That's good. Life is full of riddles that only the dead can answer," was Dad's reply. [40] "The only power poor people have is their hunger." [70] The dead shook off their rust of living and seized up steel. Their lips quivered with the defiance of innocents, with manipulations of politicians and their interchangeable dreams, and with the insanity of thugs who don't even know for which parties they commit their atrocities. [180] It was a night replaying its corrosive recurrence on the road of our lives, on the road which was hungry for great transformations. [180] Her eyes were narrowed as if they were endlessly trying to exclude most of what they saw. [228] "Can you understand what the rats are saying?" "No. But I can kill them." "Why?" ...

Title: Incidents at the Shrine Author: Ben Okri Genre: Short Stories Publishers: Vintage Pages: 136 Year of First Publication: 1986 (this edition, 1993) Country: Nigeria Incidents at the Shrine is a collection of eight short stories by Ben Okri, the 1991 Booker Prize winner (with Famished Road). These eight short stories touch on different aspects of life within Nigeria and in the World at large. Though the stories are varied, a common theme threading through this novel is the magical reality that underlies Okri's writing. In 'Laughter Beneath the Bridge', the Biafran war is told from the viewpoint of a ten year old boy. If it had never occurred to you that wars could also affect the emotional life of younger children then read this short piece. Children and women had most often being cited as the victims of war but the emphasis has mostly been placed  on their geographical and psychological dislocation. However, this short piece tells of how this ten-y...