The Famished Road

The Famished Road is the Booker Prize-winning novel written by Nigerian author Ben Okri. The novel, published in 1991, follows Azaro, an abiku or spirit child, living in an unnamed most likely Nigerian city. The novel employs a unique narrative style incorporating the spirit world with the "real" world in what some have classified as magical realism. Others have labeled it animist realism. Still others choose to simply call the novel fantasy literature. The book exploits the belief in the coexistence of the spiritual and material worlds that is a defining aspect of traditional African life.