Ben Okri’sunique Booker Prize-winning epic, narrated by ‘an unwilling adventurer into chaos and sunlight, into the dreams of the living and the dead’."A dazzling achievement for any writer in any language."  -Henry Louis Gates, New York Times Book ReviewIn the decade since it won the Booker Prize,Ben Okri'sFamished Roadhas become a classic. LikeSalman Rushdie's Midnight's ChildrenorGabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, it combines brilliant narrative technique with a fresh vision to create an essential work of world literature. The narrator, Azaro, is an abiku, a spirit child, who in the Yoruba tradition of Nigeria exists between life and death. The life he foresees for himself and the tale he tells are full of sadness and tragedy, but inexplicably he is born with a smile on his face. Nearly called back to the realm of the dead, he is resurrected to confront the tension between the land of the living, often joyful despite the violence and political struggles, and the temptations of the carefree kingdom of the spirits."Long in the telling, like a great epic poem, Okri's tale is a beautifully rendered allegory, enriched by its African setting, of love powerful enough to defy even death and his minions."-Kirkus Reviews“A mesmerizing vision of modern Nigeria, seen through the eyes of a peculiarly sentient child…. The Famished Road is a quintessential African novel.”-The Philadelphia InquirerBen Okribooks have won several awards including the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Africa, the Paris Review Aga Khan Prize for Fiction and the prestigious International Literary Prize Chianti Rufino-Antico Fattore 1993. The Famished Road won the Booker Prize in 1991. He was born in Minna, Nigeria.