Review of Ben Okri's "Astonishing The Gods"

Fables carry many luxuriant treasures for the ears and eyes. This is why we find solace in them. As children we sojourned comfortably in our beds, immersed in the fables our parents read to us amongst the soft lamplight. As adults the residue from these stories still subtly modulates within us. Only now we have the ability to weave our own lives into the fables and, if we are paying close enough attention, the fables will imitate our lives by putting a mirror up to them.

African writer Ben Okri creates spellbinding fables that are timeless in execution and accessible for people of varying age groups. And indeed his stories hold up the mirror of self-discovery. Maybe his aptitude in creating engulfing tales came from listening to his grandmother, grandfather, mother, and father talk about the ups and downs of Africa’s ancestry? My guess is that he listened attentively, but fine-tuned these stories when he found a deeper spectrum of his own self. Quite clearly in Astonishing The Gods, Okri writes from a place of profundity where the literary dynasties of myth and redemption come to play.

Right from the get go, Okri entrances the reader with a stylistic prose that hums melodiously and magnificently. He expounds that a nameless man--a man who is search of visibility--is on a quest with a hard to pin down destination. An ominous-yet-placid feeling surrounds each word after this point, and much to Okri’s skill in painting with language, the reader is swept away with each emotive stroke. Wandering through lands filled with contradictions and etheric vibrations, cautiously walking over an alchemical bridge shape-shifting to his oscillating moods, listening to the whimsical and wise sermons of unseen guides, Okri’s nameless character moves through the destination-less journey with every nuance of his soul taking note. You could say the nameless character is doing some astounding research in a sabbatical that we all have a difficult time comprehending: the exploration of the brain-soul complex. This is why I would say Okri writes about the human position in a universe shrouded in shadow and illumination.

Not only should you read this book to peer into an unsung classic of contemporary literature, you should read this book to peer into the glutinous fluid of passion that galvanizes your own being. This way you could harvest all the ideas the novelist has to offer and, in exchange, plant memes in your own creations of darkness, beauty, lightness, and revelation. After all, I am sure all an author like Ben Okri wants to do is unfetter the mind’s tangled wings so they can fly to their rightful place in the heavens.