carnevalemanfredonia.it » Literature » Stars of the New Curfew

eBook Stars of the New Curfew download

by Ben Okri

ISBN: 0670825204
Author: Ben Okri
Publisher: Viking Adult; 1st American ed edition (July 13, 1989)
Language: English
Pages: 208
ePub: 1590 kb
Fb2: 1228 kb
Rating: 4.5
Other formats: doc lit docx mobi
Category: Literature

Download ePub Download Fb2

More..

Ben Okri has published 8 novels, including The Famished Road, as well as collections of poetry . I didn't know much about Ben Okri, but assumed he was a British born and bred Nigerian

Ben Okri has published 8 novels, including The Famished Road, as well as collections of poetry, short stories and essays. I didn't know much about Ben Okri, but assumed he was a British born and bred Nigerian. the nuances, illustrations of smells and dialogues.

Ben Okri depicts the various nigerian urban and village mindset so clearly that I found it hard to believe he never live in post-colonial realities of the Nigerian nightmare. the titular tale is possibly the best. and builds from a simple mundane narrative about a frustrated salesman into a nightmarish vision of what would happen if Hell came to live in a lagos slum

Ben Okri, 1959 - Nigerian novelist, Ben Okri was born in Minna to Grace and Silver Okri. This novel was followed by two collections of short stories, "Incidents at the Shrine" (1986), and "Starts of the New Curfew" (1988). Several of the stories tell of the Biafran War from a child's eyes.

Ben Okri, 1959 - Nigerian novelist, Ben Okri was born in Minna to Grace and Silver Okri. After his birth, they moved to England so his father could study law. At the age of seven, his family returned to Nigeria and his father practiced in Lagos where the people couldn't afford normal legal fees. The novel "The Famished Road" (1991) tells the story of a character who must choose between the pain of mortality and the land of the spirits.

To enter the world of Ben Okri's stories is to surrender to a new reality. Set in the chaotic streets of Lagos and the jungle heart of Nigeria, all the laws of cause and effect, fact and fiction, are suspended. It is a world where the lives of the powerless veer terrifyingly close to nightmare. In rich, lyrical, almost hallucinatory prose Ben Okri guides us through the fabulous and the mundane, the serene and the randomly violent

To enter the world of Ben Okri& stories is to surrender to a new reality.

To enter the world of Ben Okri& stories is to surrender to a new reality. In rich, lyrical, almost hallucinatory prose Ben Okri guides us through the fabulous and the mundane, the serene and the randomly violent. impotence, their unquenchable humour and their insistence on the possibility of love in the face of terror.

Much more than documents. Discover everything Scribd has to offer, including books and audiobooks from major publishers. Flag for inappropriate content. Uploaded by. Gabriela Domínguez.

If the epigraph itself- We carry in our worlds that flourish/ our worlds that have failed -leads rather unambiguously to one of the collection’s six stories, Worlds that Flourish, then the influence of T. S. Eliot on Okigbo’s poetry leads more circumspectly, via allusion rather than quotation, to another, In the City of Red Dust.

A collection of six stories set in the streets of Lagos and the jungles of Nigeria depict the wide-ranging efforts to survive in the face of terror

Comments: (7)

Feri

If we except the first story, "In the Shadow of War", which seemed slight and unworthy of the rest, STARS OF THE NEW CURFEW contains five topnotch stories by Nigerian author Ben Okri. To use a `national' adjective like that is sometimes to say everything and sometimes to say nothing. In this case, it is obvious that though you can take Okri out of Nigeria (he lives in London), you cannot take Nigeria out of Okri. The gritty, sweaty, illogical desperation of his characters, hanging on to life by hook or by crook in the slums of Lagos or provincial towns, is so vivid that so-called "magical realism" seems more like "realism". The smell of sewerage and dried fish, the clash of traffic, drums and trumpets, the spieling of patent medicine salesmen, the dust, the heaps of garbage, the roar of military trucks and aircraft drown out your disbelief. Okri is the Tutuola of the modern age, a more controlled, a more polished Yoruba tale spinner with none of the hopes of the more-placid colonial era when independence was only a goal. Published after 28 years of freedom, these stories reflect the chaos, the corruption, the lost chances and the waste of human abilities and natural resources. Maybe they are just stories, maybe they are a protest from the soul---what has happened to our Nigeria ? The military governor's birthday where one of the crazily zooming planes celebrating the occasion crashes into a slum----the competition of two wealthy families in a small town which takes the form of a money-throwing contest in which poor and unlucky fellow citizens abase themselves by fighting over notes and coins---the irony of a bewildered Rastafarian from the long-vanished diaspora, returned to preach and cry out "Africa, we counting on yuh !" in the streets of chaos and ruin. People live on their wits, people live at the expense of others' health and earnings, violence rules, the beautiful girl will die, life is cheap, yet dearly held for all that. The last story, "What the Tapster Saw", ripped from the same cloth as Tutuola's "The Palm-wine Drinkard", is a tale as told by the traditionally powerless to deliver subtle messages about affairs in the real world without pointing any fingers. It can be a message for Nigeria, it can be just the fantastic wanderings of a storyteller's fevered brain. These are wonderful stories, Okri is a worthy addition to the pantheon of Nigerian literature. "There are several ways to burn in your own fire."(p.191) Here they are.

Skyway

Interesting that many reviewers are not clear about Ben Okri's ethnic origin. It should suffice that Ben is from Nigeria, but the fact that he partially lived in the UK seemed to have added another possible strain of cultural influence or indeed separation into his work.Ben is from the 3 million strong Urhobho ethnic group. He has been compared to iconic Yoruba author Amos Tutuola which at first baffled me...but upon further consideration somewhat agree. I came upon his work when i first returned to live in England in 89 (after living in Nigeria-my homeland- for over 15 years). I didn't know much about Ben Okri, but assumed he was a British born and bred Nigerian.Stars of the Curfew was the fist book I bought and two stories deep i very quickly decided that Ben Okri had lived and breathed the same realities of my 70's and 80's Nigeria.The devil was in the detail in the stories...the nuances, illustrations of smells and dialogues. Ben Okri depicts the various nigerian urban and village mindset so clearly that I found it hard to believe he never live in post-colonial realities of the Nigerian nightmare. Of all the amazing phantasmagoric stories...the titular tale is possibly the best. It is strident, urgent, chaotic....and builds from a simple mundane narrative about a frustrated salesman into a nightmarish vision of what would happen if Hell came to live in a lagos slum. To me as a Nigerian, a lot of his themes and motifs are entirely familiar.The best illustrate what I mean,in story Stars of a New Curfew, the turning point for the hero was his introduction to the drug POWER DRUG.To any nigerian who lived in lagos in the 70s and 80s...there was a fabled drug that you could discreetly get from your local pharmacy. No one was sure of what the drug did, but everyone seemed to have a dread of the drug that defied logic. To some it could cure unnamed illnesses, to others it could imbibe you-at a cost- with superhuman strength.I once met a man who alleged to have used the drug to stay awake for weeks while studying for his accountancy exam.Now guess what that drug was called...POWER DRUG.

Related to Stars of the New Curfew: