Prayer for the Living

November 16, 2020
Booker-winner Okri (The Freedom Artist) delivers a sprawling collection that spans continents, centuries, and the border between the real and the supernatural. Told in alternating flash fictions and longer works, the stories all evoke the cadence of origin myths and oral history. There are modern-day fables like “In the Ghetto,” which features a life lesson taught by a father to his sons after their car breaks down and no one helps them, and “A Sinister Perfection,” in which a child’s dollhouse has real-world ramifications in the vein of the classic W.W. Jacob story “The Monkey’s Paw.” Others offer vivid portraits of a real and troubled world: three stories titled “Boko Haram” follow the terrorist group, and others take place in war-torn landscapes or on boats attempting to carry refugees across the Mediterranean, such as the brief “Raft”: “There were men in the water clinging to the raft and wearing life jackets.... The women and children were in the sea, and the sea was in the raft.” These visceral, brief depictions of violence and fear are the most powerful of the collection. This is as an essential reminder of the timeless and vital nature of storytelling.

Starred review from January 1, 2021

Penetrating Okri's mind is like tumbling down a rabbit hole, a mesmerizing trip into a landscape of bemusement and ambiguity, where time exists on multiple planes. In fact, one story about a detective investigating a crime that has not yet been committed is aptly titled "Alternative Realities Are True," which could be the theme for this collection of tales and fables involving miniature houses, a cursed door from Newgate prison, and a mysterious mirror used by Rosicrucian spiritualists. In the devastating title piece, the narrator searches for family in the ruins left by rampaging soldiers, the agony of the survivors starkly contrasting with the hauntingly joyful songs emanating from the souls of the dead. And in the exquisite "Byzantium," a man's imagined idyll in Istanbul feels more lifelike than his reality, particularly when, at the Blue Mosque, he leans a hand against a stone pillar and senses a oneness with every being who came before. VERDICT Booker Prize-winning poet and novelist Okri (The Famished Road) creates a dreamlike atmosphere in one story, whipsaws the reader into a horrifying triptych about Boko Haram in the next, and then calms with unexpectedly gentle humor. There is something to entice or challenge every reader in this eclectic repertoire.--Sally Bissell, formerly with Lee Cty. Lib. Syst., Fort Myers, FL

Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from November 1, 2020
A career-spanning story collection from the Booker Prize-winning Nigerian writer that navigates the blurry line between dream and reality. Okri's stories are so concerned with myth and folklore, and so comfortable in the style of those genres, that his best ones sometimes feel as if written on parchment or chiseled in granite. In the eerie, allegorical title story, a man searching for his loved ones in a town devastated by soldiers finds a kind of collective solidarity with the corpses he discovers: "All the faces are familiar. Death has made them all my kin." "A Sinister Perfection" features a dollhouse that seems to have the power to make (usually bad) things happen in reality. The narrator of "Dreaming of Byzantium" finds himself in Istanbul, uncertain of how he got there or of the woman he shares his hotel bed with; his journey becomes a study in how "unreality makes reality." Okri's stories propose a kind of existential balancing act: If we err when we place too much faith in reality, we can also too easily succumb to delusion. "The Lie," for instance, is a fable about a king who sends his minions out to discover universal truths only to face an uncomfortable one about himself: "Your power is unreal. It is made of air. It consists of what we have conferred on you." The stories don't always strive for timelessness: Three tales concern the African terrorist group Boko Haram. Nor is the mysticism always somber: "Alternative Realities Are True" is a dimension-warping detective story worthy of Philip K. Dick, and "Don Ki-Otah and the Ambiguity of Reading" is a Don Quixote satire whose metafictional gamesmanship evokes Borges and Achebe. Okri often plays with form, as in two stories written in a flash-fiction style he calls "stoku," a portmanteau of story and haiku. But throughout, Okri skillfully embeds abstract ideas in concrete, engaging storytelling. A diverse yet consistent collection, mind-bending and provocative in a host of styles and milieus.

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