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The Famished Road

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The Famished Road

By: Ben Okri
Narrated by: Hugh Quarshie
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About this listen

Winner of The Booker Prize 1991

So long as we are alive, so long as we feel, so long as we love, everything in us is an energy we can use.

He is born into a world of poverty, ignorance and injustice, but Azaro awakens with a smile on his face. Despite belonging to a spirit world made of enchantment, where there is no suffering, Azaro chooses to stay in the land of the Living: to feel it, endure it, know it and love it.

This is his story.

©2019 Ben Okri (P)2019 Audible, Ltd Fiction Genre Fiction Historical Fiction Magical Realism World Literature Fantasy

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All stars
Most relevant  
Hugh Quarshie sounds like the book sounded in my head

This is an absolute joy thank you sooooo much xxxx

Just beautiful

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I find it hard to find books with a good narrator, if I don't like them it's a struggle to listen to the book. This narrator is absolutely perfect and has many voices. I just can't get enough of this book on here. Highly recommend!

Amazing narrator!

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I enjoyed listening to this book as much as I had enjoyed reading it. It''s definitely one I will return to again.
I loved the narrator's voice too.

A joy to listen to

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The atmosphere in this book is other worldly and really different to any book I have read before. I felt very immersed in the world Okri has created - however it is not easy going! It is convoluted and confusing, in a way that mirrors the frame the protagonist is in. I would be interested in reading this in hardcopy.

Ethereal but quite hard to get through!

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Loved the way the characters came to life, one could actually visualise them. A great listen.

Loved the characters who really came to life in t

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The dialogue is descriptive with intent but not boasting of capability
The story is powerful and seamless, foretelling our current situation.
The solution is always a change of heart.
The language resonated with my ancestral blood line
I loved it

Darkness flowered

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The narrator deeply etches and emotes every character with loud and subdued personality. A long listen, I needed to pause between parts, but the poetry of this writing kept me continuing. And wow, it transcends the human-spirit experience in voids and layers and evolutions. It takes you into the inner organs and feelings of status, poverty, family and neighbours, completely messy and endearing.

A vivid explosion of the mytho-poetic in Africa

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Ben Okri's 'The Famished Road is my Favorite book in its genre. When I first came across this book back in 1991 I had never heard of Ben Okri and really only bought the book because he was noted as a Booker Prize Winner. That year it was the best money I ever spent. I was enthralled. I couldn't put the book down. The People became real to me and I wondered if the film studio's would make a movie out of it. This is my mirrored thoughts on the book by The Booker Prize Judge;

Ben Okri's beautifully written and moving novel combines fantasy and the vision of a child, the supernatural and the here-and-now to convey Nigerian peasant life in a changing world. It is the most ambitious as well as one of the most fullly realised of this year's novels. It brings a distictively black African way of writing and seeing things into the mainstream of European fiction.

Jeremy Treglowan
Chairman of the Booker Prize Judges

A Great Literary Marvel

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I was so in AWE of Hugh performance and the storytelling, Ben Okri is a magician with the pen, and this story was captivating. An Ode to things fall apart and the griot storytelling of old. Listen to it and let it transport or transform you.

A wonderful whirlwind of a Story.

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A well written and narrated story. The story transcends all imagination, transports one to the world of spirit

The Famished Road

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