In a film made exclusively for the Booker Prizes, Ben Okri, the first Black winner of the Booker Prize, explains how he had to create fresh techniques to tell a story rooted in his African childhood
I am reading Ben Okri's "The Famished Road" in the Everyman's Library, and recommend readers, particularly those new to his work, to also read the introduction written by Vanessa Guingnery. She mentions that Okri suggested there should be a "Slow Reading movement" and this is certainly a useful approach to this book. I have read and reread page after page, following another idea of Okri's quoted in Guingnery's essay, "True reading is not just passing our eyes over words on a page, or even understanding what is being said. True reading is a creative act. It means seeing first; and then a subsequent act of imagination."
Okra's book has given me a way to reconnect to the magical thinking of my own childhood. His mixing of enchantment and ordinary life is what early childhood entwines naturally, which the growing up process too easily disconfirms, leading to disenchantment. There is so much to learn from Okra's writing, not least how to reconnect to an earlier self. If the behavioral psychologists are correct, once we change our beliefs we can no longer remember our previous beliefs, but Okri shows a possible bridge made possible in reading this remarkable and wonderful work of art.
I am reading Ben Okri's "The Famished Road" in the Everyman's Library, and recommend readers, particularly those new to his work, to also read the introduction written by Vanessa Guingnery. She mentions that Okri suggested there should be a "Slow Reading movement" and this is certainly a useful approach to this book. I have read and reread page after page, following another idea of Okri's quoted in Guingnery's essay, "True reading is not just passing our eyes over words on a page, or even understanding what is being said. True reading is a creative act. It means seeing first; and then a subsequent act of imagination."
Okra's book has given me a way to reconnect to the magical thinking of my own childhood. His mixing of enchantment and ordinary life is what early childhood entwines naturally, which the growing up process too easily disconfirms, leading to disenchantment. There is so much to learn from Okra's writing, not least how to reconnect to an earlier self. If the behavioral psychologists are correct, once we change our beliefs we can no longer remember our previous beliefs, but Okri shows a possible bridge made possible in reading this remarkable and wonderful work of art.