The Famished Road Book Review — By Adedeji Adebimpe

The Famished Road is a beautiful work that strings up the magical and the reality. Ben is undoubtedly one of the magical realists of our time.

The story revolves round a major character, Azaro whom circumstances surrounding his birth are capable of springing up arguments and ponderings. He is an ‘Abiku’ who stayed after coming and leaving five times. He has a very weak tie with the world in which we dwell and has stronger ties with his home which is another world entirely. Ben paints Azaro as a mysterious child and the mystery surrounding his birth and personality is a major factor that aids conveyance of the message of the story.

The Famished Road is a book that seems unimaginable and yet so real. Ben Okri applied beautiful magical, mythical, mysterious and almost traditional literary devices and techniques in driving home his message to the audience.

The description of events in the story suggests an African setting. In addition, it suggests the setting and nationality of the characters being Nigerians. This is evident in a superstitious belief that caught my fancy in a part of the story.

‘Leke Leke

Give me one finger

White finger’

He adds that the birds miraculously speckles one or two of the children’s fingernails with whiteness after chanting the above words and flapping their fingers, palms- down to the flight of the birds. Here, we see how Ben applied the age long superstition among children so professionally making recourse to it as if he didn't mention any thing out of the ordinary in the way he switched from superstitious and magical to reality. This professionalism in story telling made me disregard the thought of this play among children being superstitious. For a brief second, I thought it was real and maybe the birds truly give a touch and speckle of whiteness to fingers.

The way he described the ghosts in the police man’s house had a strong touch of realism and realness attached to it and anyone could imagine and believe the scene that seems so obscure and unreal.

Azaro also encounters spirits who imitate human features to the best of their ability so as to have a taste of life although not perfectly as some end up with two heads, sometimes five legs, he described one in the market as walking on its head with tiny legs beneath its head. They had various forms of abnormalities. Some were members of other worlds who came to human world to market and trade and leave for home just like humans do. They on the other hand sometimes enter trees, walk into the heart of the forest, disappear, turn to thin air or even melt. He encounters them as we would see in the book mostly when he wanders away like he usually did or in Madame Koto’s bar because according to his observation, the fetish she hangs in the shop attracts them.

Ben used various literary techniques, one of the dominant techniques being personification; he continuously ascribes human attributes to the forests, roads, food and in some instances, the photographer’s camera.

‘The forest will swallow you’

Madame Koto had said this to Azaro in a part of the story. The way Ben had applied it in the context was so real that an attentive reader would almost imagine the road swallow Azaro even though the road doesn't have a mouth and it’s just figurative as in that case to mean that Azaro will be killed in the heart of the forest like the man she was referring to was killed.

The Famished Road also exposes various societal ills, a major one being Poverty and dirty Politics.

Azaro’s family and how they lived exposes the readers to what an ordinary poor man goes through in the contemporary society. How rats ate their properties in the house and even communicated with each other was so real that it is capable of reminding a reader of the little rats in the homes and even ponder on whether these rats could really be communicating with each other. The poverty in the family is further buttressed when circa fifty two rats were seen dead in the house after the photographer gave them a potent poison to get rid of them. Their poverty is portrayed in their debts, the drama of the creditors and even the landlord. This escalates into frustration as Azaro’s father hit his mother one of the days he was frustrated from carrying heavy loads at the market, working so hard and yet barely able to make a living.

There’s however love in his family and an undying love is very much portrayed in the relationship of the poor family. When Azaro’s father hit his mother, he immediately made reconciliatory moves.

He paints politics and political activities in the story which is more like it obtains in present and real practice. Their lies while campaigning and soliciting for votes. Citizens’ distrust in them, division of the society into fractions where some people claim to be members of Party of Poor and others of Rich. The division in political affairs would later lead to riots, killings, fighting and shedding of blood through different methods. He didn’t stray from applying the magical in the course of telling the story, reality. For instance, Azaro saw the milk the politicians gave them during campaign take the form of a ghost. The milk as they would all get to know later was poisoned.

Ben Okri used different story telling and beautiful literary techniques to convey his message and produce a beautiful work all along not straying from the dominant style or writing technique which has Magical Realism embedded in it.

By way of conclusion, The Famished Road, which is a figurative expression as deduced from the book, the characters, happenings in the book particularly Azaro’s wanderings explains in clear terms the hunger of the roads. I would like to make a brief observation of the dominant place I drew out the intent of the title from which is in the story Azaro’s father told him. A story of the King of the Road, the hungry, famished, and greedy King.

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