Fiction
‘The Age of Magic has begun.
Unveil your eyes.’
Eight weary film-makers, travelling from Paris to Basel, arrive at a small Swiss hotel on the shores of a luminous lake. Above them, strewn with lights that twinkle in the darkness, looms the towering Rigi mountain. Over the course of three days and two nights, the travellers will find themselves drawn in to the mystery of the mountain reflected in the lake. One by one, they will be disturbed, enlightened, and transformed, each in a different way.
An intoxicating and dreamlike tale unfolds. Allow yourself to be transformed. Having shown a different way of seeing the world, Ben Okri now offers a different way of reading.
The Age of Magic is available here.
An epic of daily life, Dangerous Love is a story of doomed love, of star-crossed lovers, separated not by their families, but by the very circumstances of their lives.
Omovo, a Nigerian office-worker and artist who lives at home with his father and his father’s second wife. In the world of the compound in which he lives, Omovo has many friends and some enemies, but most important of all there is Ifeyiwa, a beautiful young married woman whom he loves with an almost hopeless passion - not because she doesn’t return his love, but because they can never be together.
Dangerous Love is available here.
A group of angry and ill-assorted people accept an invitation to make a journey. Inspired by a painting and financed by a mysterious benefactor, they set off to discover the real Arcadia. Or what remains of it.
Their journey begins in ignorance and chaos at Waterloo station and takes them through superstition and myth to harmony. In the Louvre, in front of Poussin’s masterpiece, they begin to understand.
In Arcadia is available here.
Essays
Twelve of Ben Okri’s most controversial non-fiction pieces form this collection on the theme of freedom, ranging from the personal to the analytical, including a meditation on the role of the poet, a study of Picasso’s Minotaur, a paean to human freedom in honour of Salman Rushdie, and an appraisal of fellow-Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe. Lyrically imaginative and provocative, A Way of Being Free confirms Okri’s place as one of the most inspiring of contemporary writers.
A Way of Being Free is available here.
Other Fiction
Flowers and Shadows
The Landscapes Within
Incidents at the Shrine
Stars of the New Curfew
The Famished Road
Songs of Enchantment
Infinite Riches
Starbook
Tales of Freedom
The Age of Magic
Other essays
Birds of Heaven
A Time for New Dreams
Poetry
An African Elegy
Mental Fight
Wild