The Famished Road Introduction by Vanessa Guignery

A beautiful hardcover Contemporary Classics edition of Nigerian author Ben Okri's lushly imaginative novel, which was awarded the Booker Prize in 1991.

The narrator of The Famished Road is a spirit-child who exists between life and death, destined to an endless cycle of death and rebirth. But this time, born with a smile on his face, Azaro begins to fall in love with life and to rebel against his fate. The story the child tells flows between the difficulties of the land of the living and the carefree world of spirits. Okri infuses a vivid portrait of an unnamed West African country with the rich traditions of African mythology and the result is a powerfully haunting masterpiece.

Everyman's Library pursues the highest production standards, printing on acid-free cream-colored paper, with full-cloth cases with two-color foil stamping, decorative endpapers, silk ribbon markers, European-style half-round spines, and a full-color illustrated jacket.

BEN OKRI's books have won several awards including the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Africa, the Paris Review Aga Khan Prize for Fiction and the International Literary Prize Chianti Rufino-Antico Fattore 1993. The Famished Road won the Booker Prize in 1991. He was born in Minna, Nigeria.

About the Introducer: VANESSA GUIGNERY is Professor of English Literature and Postcolonial Literature at the École Normale Supérieure de Lyon, France. She is the author of Novelists in the New Millennium.