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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...

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...

[ continued from here ] WEST AFRICA This is the concluding part of the series of reviews from the Contemporary African Short Stories, edited by Chinua Achebe and C.L. Innes. The anthology was categorised into geographic areas: SOUTHERN AFRICA , CENTRAL AFRICA , EAST AFRICA , NORTH AFRICA and WEST AFRICA.  I decided to review the stories one after the other instead of finding common thread running along them and reviewing them along those lines or using themes to merge stories. This has been fulfilling but also tasking. Future short stories collection might take a different approach. Converging City by Ben Okri (Nigeria) Ben Okri This is the second time I am reading this story, first encountering it in his collection of short stories title Incidents at the Shrine . I must say that reading it a second time has helped me appreciate the story very well. Converging City is a mosaic of interconnecting scenes through which Okri portrays the urban stragglers and strugglers...

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...

This list excludes single stories. Single stories are uncollected short stories published in magazines, blogs, online newspapers, and other places. It is believed that such stories would be collected by author and later 'formally' published, hence their exclusion. -1900 to 1909- -- -1910 to 1919- -- -1920 to 1929- The Castle :  Franz  Kafka Death Comes for the Archbishop : Willa Cather A Farewell to Arms :  Ernest Hemingway The Great Gatsby : F. Scott Fitzgerald Mrs. Dalloway : Virginia Woolf The Trial : Franz Kafka -1930 to 1939- Absalom, Absalom! :  William  Faulkner Auto da Fe :   Elias  Canetti Brave New World:   Aldous Huxley Chaka:  Thomas Mofolo Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day : Winifred Watson Theatre :   Somerset  W.   Maugham -1940 to 1949- 1984 :  George Orwell The Catcher in the Rye :  J.D. Salinger Cry, the Beloved Country:  Alan Paton Mine Boy:   ...

For other categories, see Review This lists alphabetically books reviewed on ImageNations beginning with the title. If the title begins with 'the', the next word in title is used; unless the whole title of the book is THE, this I have not as yet met. This is not the case if the title begins with the indefinite article 'a'. -1- 1984 :  George Orwell -A- A Bend in the River :  V.S. Naipaul A Farewell to Arms : Ernest Hemingway A Grain of Wheat :  Ngugi wa Thiong'o A Heart to Mend : Myne Whitman A House for Mr. Biswas :  V.S.  Naipaul   A Life in Full: Jude Dibia A Man of the People : Chinua Achebe A Month and a Day & Letters :  Ken Saro-Wiwa A Question of Power: Bessie Head A Sense of Savannah, Tales of a Friendly Walk through Northern Ghana :  Kofi Akpabli A Woman Alone: Bessie Head Absalom, Absalom! :  William  Faulkner Accra! Accra! More Poems about Modern Afrika:  Papa Kobina Ulzen Anthill...