“People who use only their eyes do not SEE. People who use only their ears do not HEAR. It is more difficult to love than to die. It is not death that human beings are most afraid of, it is love.”

These words come from the father of the protagonist, Azaro, in Ben Okri’s novel, The Famished Road. Azaro’s father is telling his son about the spirit world he could finally see after his near-death experience and providing hard-earned wisdom he wanted to impart.

Azaro is a spirit-child and can see in both the human and spirit worlds and is growing up in an unnamed African country that seems to be set in the 1980s. Okri takes the reader through Azaro’s eyes into a chaotic, narrowing world that was beautiful to read but unrelenting in its despair and unjustness towards those at the lower end of society.

It took me over a month to read The Famished Road because I had to absorb the thirty to fifty pages I would read during each reading session. Azaro was an interesting protagonist, and his journey throughout the novel kept my interest, but the supporting characters including his parents and the eccentric bar owner, Madame Koto, were unsettling counterparts in this coming of age story.

The purpose of reading fiction transcends enjoyment; it’s about venturing beyond familiar boundaries. You’ll gain a deeper understanding of the story by considering different perspectives. The Famished Road succeeds in that easily. But fails in the basic enjoyment of a story on its own terms. However, I’m glad to have finally read this Booker Prize-winning novel from the early 1990s, and it deserves to be mentioned alongside the best works of this genre.