In the beginning there was a river. The river became a road and the road branched out to the whole world. And because the road was once a river it was always hungry.

So starts the novel that propelled Ben Okri to international fame and Booker Prize success. Still Okri’s most famous work, this epic tale tells of an Abiku named Azaro, not meant for this world but not yet willing to die. Okri followed in the footsteps of many great postcolonial writers yet forms his own unique style of magical realism. The novel as a whole invokes a strange and chaotic newly independent Nigeria where the country’s poor are exploited at every turn. Ben Okri is in discussion at Africa Writes 2015. Book your tickets now: http://bit.ly/1aAKIe7