I usually don´t pick up books with short stories but this was available at my local library and I was doing a challenge to only read Black authors during Black History Month, so I picked it up.

Some of the stories I didn´t enjoy as much but there were quite a few that I really liked "Alternate Realities are true" (the one with the murder by the canal in London definitely being one of them) and the story about Don Ki-Otah. I liked that a lot of the stories weren´t straightforward and had me thinking about them to figure out what they meant, and I also liked that some characters reoccured throughout.
I think Okri is a wonderful writer and poet and I might have to keep an eye out for more of his work.

However, I have to say it might be good to include a warning about the Boko Haram chapters. It isn´t necessarily what he says but what he doesn´t say that made my mind go to places I´d rather not take it without being prepared for it (I saw a play called Far Gone last year - highly recommend - that centred Boko Haram too but knowing this meant I could prepare myself for what was coming, Okri´s first chapter, by comparison, took me by surprise).

I think I will give this book 4 stars, but the 5th star is for Ben Okri's mother - thank you, Ben Okri's mother!

Why his mother? The explanation is in this Guardian article, which I quote here:

My mother’s enigmatic way of telling stories. They appeared to have no point but they haunted me with their suggestiveness, and they were so fascinating that 40 years later I still contemplate their elusive meanings.

In that same article, Ben Okri says that Cervantes' Don Quixote was the book that changed his life. Perhaps that explains why, of all the stories told in this collection, his story about Don Ki-Otah blew my mind. You can get a teensy-tiny taste of the amazing words in this story by watching this short YouTube video from a festival where some people acted out the story!

I was not a fan of all the stories, but I certainly enjoyed listening to Ben Okri tell me stories. I stumbled up on this book my accident. It was listed on the front page of the Libby app I use to get e-books or audio books from my library. I was searching for something else and this simply caught my eye. I have a bazillion books on my TBR list, and Ben Okri just waltzed to the front of the queue. Technically speaking, I wanted something in audio and short stories appealled to me. I am so lucky to have made this choice. This is storytelling. S-t-o-r-y-t-e-l-l-i-n-g. And his mother must be shining through because some are mere enigmas, but so fascinating that they linger and linger in a pleasant way, or even in uncomfortable ways. There is myth, folklore, philosophy, and some other wonderful, undefinable things mixed together in this collection.

I could not find a list of all the stories in the collection so I have made one here. I thought I would savour these stories over the month I had when borrowing this from the library. I ended up devouring them all rather quickly. Like me facing a box of chocolate. However, especially after reading the tale about Don Ki-Otah, I feel a touch guilty. Also, I could imagine the delight in having a paper copy of a few of them just to ponder on once in while.

Boko Haram 1 - A young boy is a suicide bomber... This tale is just tragic.
Prayer for the Living - The narrator walks through the desolation of a town in a dry desert-like area after it has been destroyed in a war (probably the war in Biafra). The concept of death, dying, with the added observation about white television crews who come to film these events. Very haunting, moving, and extremely though-provoking in its desolation and tragedy.
An Inca Elegy - Visiting a town in the Andes where the last of the Incas lived. The narrator is a guide for tourists in the area.
A Sinister Perfection - Rather creepy, but very well told! About a young girl who received a doll's house as a present - a house that was a duplicate of their own house...
Ancient Ties of Karma - A young man and an old man hold a series of duels in various realms - realm of shadow, realm of thought, and finally the realm of reality. One of the enigmas with an elusive meaning, but beautifully written.
Dreaming of Byzantium - A haunting tale. Moves through dreams, thoughts, and maybe reality. Does unreality make reality?
The Canopy - Not quite sure!
In the ghetto - A young boy and his family are returning home and their car breaks down in a dusty street before they reach home. Discussions of who helps who and when and why between the father and the boys. The atmosphere is vividly captured. I felt very thirsty in the heat of that dusty road!
Hail - A young man stops in a framer's shop while out shopping with his baby daughter and his girlfriend. He listens to the discussion between the framer and two other clients. One of the clients was a painter who gave up painting after painting 500 pictures because he was depressed.
Mysteries - Conversations between a poet and an actor. I liked the poet's feelings about a play. He "appreciated the trouble people took to create something and never allowed himself to become snobbish". If he was diverted and stimulated and personally found value in what he saw, he was "generally contented".
Tulips - A visit to an art gallery.
The Lie - A king wants to know what constitutes the greatest lie in the world is. He hoped this would teach him the greatest truth. This is also a bit enigmatic or perhaps "just" philosophical, but the style is old-fashioned in a very good way. I could easily imagine being a child sitting at the foot of an elder telling tales and being enthralled by this. But, regardless of our chronological age, are we not often innocent children listening hungrily to those who tell us our stories?
Boko Haram 2 - Again, the tragedy seeps through this short, minimalist tale.
The Master's Mirror - A story with a touch of rosicrucianism and maybe (not sure) Dorian Grey.
The Stander Uppers - Told from the perspective of prehistoric creatures when they transformed from crouchers who ran on four legs to "the stander uppers" who walked on two legs. The imagery of the light god and the dark god was brillian (understanding day and night). Interesting perspective that the crouchers did not like those who walked on three legs (transitioning from four to two legs) and contemplated eating them. Also in the perception of art on the wall of the cave - were the beasts on the wall edible or what?
Alternative Realities are True - Detective Draper solves a murder mystery due to his grasp of different realities because the murder hasn't actually taken place yet. Definitely enigmatic!
The Story in the Next Room
The Overtaker - Maybe a fable about the dangers of speeding on the Nigerian highways between cities, but with a sprinkling of spirit world, too, perhaps?
Raft - A tale of people fleeing on a raft to Greece...
The Secret History of a Door - A tale about the door found during the demolishing of Newgate Prison.
The Offering - "A woodsmoke tale." A woman travels into the Andes where it is said musicians offer their guitars to the spirits of the lake to help improve their musical talents.
Don Ki-Otah and the Ambiguity of Reading - As Ben Okri explains, the name was originally Don Quixote, but due to "the imaginative force of African nicknaming", he becomes Don Ki-Otah. This story is just brilliant. It's also full of excellent phrases like this one where Don Ki-Otah calls a printing machine "a machine that multiplies realities". The part about how fast or how slow you read, and where you begin to read a book is just brilliant.
Boko Haram 3 - Horrific tale, especially just after the brilliance of the previous story.
A Street - Streets carry many tales, but these are rarely captured. they are invisible in history.

“True love can only come after disenchantment. The first enchantment is a madness and fragility the madness of a fool, and the fragility of a spring flower. The second enchantment is as slow as the growth of a great tree and deeper than the ocean, but get to the second enchantment, one must survive the desert and the fire. One must grow a new heart for the first heart dies with the disenchantment.”

“ you have not understood the power of your dreams or the gift of your obstacles,” the stranger said, a dark gleam in his eyes. If fate shuts the door on you, it is because it wants you to find a greater one. The normal door you want to pass through is not for you. Every obstacle presents us with a magical solution.”

“Christian Rose kreutz, pair of calipers, Jacob Boehme and Paracelsus, ancient cooy of Fama Fraternitatis”

“we are how we are because of how others are,” she said quietly.
“that’s hard to understand.”
“It’s very simple. I am how I am because of how you are mutually we create our reality each person, even though we love suppresses some aspect of ourselves .”
“is that a law or an observation?”
“You will find that it is true here.”

“ Let it be said, while I have breath that he made us more imaginative just by being himself. I’ve never felt myself more locked in the little box of my possibilities then, in the presence of that man, he was a call to greatness. We failed to take up that challenge cowards that most of us are that failure is the lingering regret of my life. For a life passes, a life is lived. It is lived under fear and caution one thinks of one’s family. One thinks of oneself, but the life passes. And it is only the fires that your life lights in other peoples souls that count. This I know, now in the long uneventful autumn of my life there are some people one should never have met because they introduce into your heart and eternal regret for the greater life you did not live.”

“ in the course of a 52 reading career I have experimented with 322 modes of reading. I have read speedily like a bright young fool, crabbily like a teacher, querulously like a scholar wistfully like a traveler and punctiliously like a lawyer. I have read selectively like a politician, comparatively like a critic contemptuously like a tyrant, glancing Lee, like a journalist competitively, like an author laboriously like an aristocrat. I have read critically like an archaeologist microscopically like a scientist, reverentially like the blind indirectly like a poet like a peasant I have read carefully like a composer attentively like a schoolboy hurriedly like a shaman magically I have read in every single possible way there is a reading you can’t read the number and variety of books. I have read without a compendium of ways of reading.
I have read books backwards and inside out. I began reading Ovid in the middle and then to the end and then from the beginning I once read every other sentence of a book I knew well and then went back and read the sentences I missed out. We are all children in the art of reading. We assume there’s only one way to read a book, but a book read in a new way becomes a new book.
And you have the nerve to tell me I am reading too slowly part of the trouble with our world my snooty young friend is that the art of reading is almost dead reading is the secret of life. We read the world poorly because we read poorly. everything is reading the world is the way you read it as we read so we are you are trying to read me now.
You are even trying to read this moment in time, but you read it dimly the words are not clear on the pages of your life youth clouds. You’re seeing emotions pass in front of the text before you have grasp it. Can you read yourself in the chapter of time? You are a living paragraph of history around you are all the horrors of time and all the wonders of life, but all you see is an old man reading with all his soul. Do you know what I am reading?
I don’t read slowly and I have long ago left reading fast to those who will continuously misunderstand everything around them. I read now the way the dead read. I read with the soles of my feet. I read with my beard. I read with the secret ventricles of my heart. I read with all my suffering joys intuitions all my love all the beatings I have received all the injustices I haven’t ordered. I read with all the magic that sleeps through the cracks in the air. Do you therefore dare to judge the way I read?
You would prefer me to gulp words down like a drunk guzzling palm wine in a Booka? I suppose you think the faster you read the more intelligent you are? I suppose for you living fast as genius. I bet you fuck fast too fuck so fast that the poor woman has hardly had time to notice that you were inside her.
What you don’t understand he said relentlessly is that nothing is done faster than when it is done. Well, you read for information. I read extract. The soul of the conception reading is like entering the mind of the gods seeing beyond the page. Can you read an entire history from a single glance? Can you deduce a poets health or the station of their time here on earth from a single line of their poetry? Do you think reading is about reading fast but reading is about understanding that which cannot be understood which the words merely hint at.”

“ before we had seen the world as somehow inevitable. We had seen that it was the only way it could be now with the new reading we saw that the world was only one of 1000 ways it could be. But we had chosen this one with its bad smells it’s injustice.”

Prayer for the Living is a very interesting collection of short stories. There is a variety in this collection; the stories can be shocking, haunting, or thought-provoking. The most important thing about this collection is the way Ben Okri writes it. There's an adjustment period to Okri's style- it's unique and because of that it's distinct. I would love to read another work of his just to see how he writes it. In Prayer for the Living I didn't necessarily love every story, but that's not to say they weren't good, there was just an assortment inside and it has something for everyone.

If you begin this book and you aren't sure this is the collection for you, at least hold out until "The Lie" before deciding to be done with it.

I received the ARC from publishers, Akashic Books for review. I also listened to the short stories on audiobook via Scribd, narrated by the author, Ben Okri. The book was published February 2, 2021, (216 pages).

This is my first reading of Ben Okri, and I also have his novel, The Freedom Artist (published in 2019), which I have not read yet. When I won an ARC of this publication, I felt it was no time then the present to read one of his books.

Since he published his first novel, Flowers and Shadows (1980), Okri has risen to an international acclaim, and he often is described as one of Africa's leading writers. His reputation as an author was secured when his novel The Famished Road won the Booker Prize for Fiction in 1991, making him the youngest ever winner of the prize at the age of 32.

The Boko Haram (1) was a shocker. A bomb is strapped to a little boy, and lead to the middle of the market square!

A Prayer for the Living, everyone in the town is dead, his brother, his lover inside an unfinished school. Amazing! My favorite stories are; In the Ghetto, and I personally related to The Masters Mirror #2 (page 123).

‘An avid collector of books, with over two thousand volumes on the shelves of his accommodations. Hockley died in 1885 of what the doctors called “natural decay” and “exhaustion.” The irony is that at the end he suffered from poor eyesight.’

Most of Okri’s stories are steeped in art, and the city or towns culture. Most of the stories depict Africans in communion with spirits. Some of the stories were very short and some were long. I enjoyed listening to Ben Okri narrate, because he has a melodic cadence, with a Nigerian accent to envision the scenes, scents, and emotions of the characters. I was disconnected with the stories, not fully understanding what was happening, not seeing what the author was writing to his audience, but his descriptions were beautiful and captivating.

#AkashicBooks
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