We haven’t had a new Ben Okri for some five years so this is something of a celebration. Sadly it is not quite magical enough, not in the same league as his magnificent The Famished Road. Charmingly written with an authentically dreamlike quality in short sections, it sweeps you along with a group of people making a TV documentary about a journey to Arcadia, Greece, while actually going from Paris to Switzerland. Or are they? Nothing is certain in this book. There is a short, sharp section on meeting the devil which is outstanding and some beautiful descriptions of landscapes. A fine book but perhaps a little light for such a great author.
P.S. - TheAge of Magic was awarded the Bad Sex in Fiction Award 2014 but we still love it!
'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.
'Okri is incapable of writing a boring sentence.' Independent on Sunday
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Author
About Ben Okri
Ben Okri was born in Minna, Nigeria. His childhood was divided between Nigeria, where he saw first hand the consequences of war, and London. He has won many prizes over the years for his fiction, and is also an acclaimed essayist, playwright, and poet. In 2019 Astonishing the Gods was named as one of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World'.
