Books by Ben Okri

A novel about life in the time immediately before the arrival of the Atlantic slavers. Two lovers meet for the first time. One is the son of a king, struggling to find his place in the world, the other is the gifted daughter of a master craftsman from a famous but secretive tribe...

The narrator, Azaro, is an abiku, a spirit child, who in the Yoruba tradition of Nigeria exists between life and death. He is born into a world of poverty, ignorance and injustice, but Azaro awakens with a smile on his face. Nearly called back to the land of the dead, he is resurrected. But in their efforts to save their child, Azaro's loving parents are made destitute. The tension between the land of the living, with its violence and political struggles, and the temptations of the carefree kingdom of the spirits propels this latter-day Lazarus's story. Despite belonging to a spirit world made of enchantment, where there is no suffering, Azaro chooses to stay in the land of the Living: to feel it, endure it, know it and love it. This is his story.

These poems range across a wide variety of subjects, from the autobiographical to the philosophical, from war to love, from nature to the difficulty of truly seeing.

An epic poem touching on issues of racism, intolerance and environmental destructions.

A Guardian Children's Book of the Year An environmental fairytale made for our times, written to be read by adults and children, from the Booker Prize-winning author of The Famished Road. In the forest near Mangoshi's village in Africa there grows a very special flower. Mangoshi knows that only this flower can save her mother's life. It can save her village too. All she has to do is find it.Ben Okri and Diana Ejaita have created a magical world of beauty and colour, an enchanting array of extraordinary trees, each with its own personality and voice. The chief among them, the great baobab, invites us into his branches to travel the world and see for ourselves the perils of not listening to nature. All around us, forests are vanishing, and no one is listening.'It was a sheer joy to be able to read this. It is mysterious and magical and true. Children and those who read it to them will love it and long remember it. The illustrations are woven wonderfully around the words; the trees are with you, telling it, writing it. Once read we will know never to take trees or leaves for granted again. A powerful symphony of a story that will resonate for every reader. We hear the wind in the trees on every page. We only have to listen' MICHAEL MORPURGO

A collection of new and recently completed poems by Ben Okri covering topics of the day, such as the refugee crisis, racism, Obama, the Grenfell Tower fire, and the Corona outbreak.

In the chaotic world of his African village, the spirit-child Azaro still watches the tumultous and tender lives of the Living; of his father who has been imprisoned for a crime he did not commit and of his mother who battles for justice. This final chapter in Azaro's adventures is a explosive and haunting climax to this masterful trilogy.

Topical and timely, Booker Prize-winning author Ben Okri's new collection of short stories blur parallel realities and walk the line between darkness and magic.

Okri brings both poetry and story together in a fascinating new form, using writing and image pared down to their essentials, where haiku and story meet.

An impassioned plea for freedom and justice, set in a world uncomfortably like our own.

An anthology of inspiring political poetry compiled by award-winning poet and novelist Ben Okri.

A new collection of meditations and stories from the Booker Prize-winning author, Ben Okri. Illustrated by Rosemary Clunie.

A group of world-weary travellers discover the meaning of life in a mysterious Swiss mountain village.

From Booker Prize-winner Ben Okri: a voyage into the enduring myth of Arcadia and the mysterious painting it inspired. A lyrical novel about art and enlightenment that takes the reader from Waterloo Station in London to Paris and a four hundred year old enigma, the painting by Nicolas Poussin known as 'Et in Arcadia Ego'. 'We never write the book we think we are writing. We never read the book we think we are reading' BEN OKRI.

From Booker Prize-winner Ben Okri: twelve of his most controversial non-fiction pieces form this collection on the theme of freedom. Ranging from the personal to the analytical, covering subjects such as art, politics, storytelling and creativity, A WAY OF BEING FREE confirms Okri's place as one of the most inspiring of contemporary writers. 'All I wanted to do was to remind myself at all times to just sing my song. To just sing it through all the difficulties and silences' BEN OKRI.

Selected as one of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World'. From Booker Prize winner Ben Okri, a deceptively simple modern fable with an ancient origin. A young man finds himself living among invisible beings who have built a utopia based on one principle: that we must repeat or suffer every experience until we experience it properly and fully for the first time.'A modern day classic' Evening Standard'Beautiful. A new creation myth' Daily Telegraph'Amazing. I think this is as close as you can get to reliving the experience of a bedtime story' Guardian

To enter the world of Ben Okri's 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. Written with the lucid clarity and logic of dream, Stars of the New Curfew is a book of visionary imagination.

Dreams are the currency of Okri's writing, particularly in this first book of poems, An African Elegy, but also in his books of short stories and prize-winning novel The Famished Road.

WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE 'So long as we are alive, so long as we feel, so long as we love, everything in us is an energy we can use' The narrator, Azaro, is an abiku, a spirit child, who in the Yoruba tradition of Nigeria exists between life and death.

The second book in the trilogy which began with the Booker prize-winning The Famished Road. 'A love story and an account of the conflict between the parties of the Rich and Poor...