★★★★★
Sir Ben Okri is an author with a vast bibliography and many achievements. His book ‘The Famished Road’ won the Booker Prize for Fiction in 1991, which he described as an initiating point for the Booker Prize to open out to a wider range of voices for consideration. His newest novel, ‘Waking the Warriors’, was the focal point of this discussion.
He described this novel as an outlier among his previous works and the first to include a map, something he has always wanted. This was predominantly down to him needing to write in a very different way because of the type of novel he was creating. He wanted the audience to understand that this novel was written while he himself was in the dark. He was not fully aware of the novel’s destination, but he had understood that there was a path toward a language of myth and lost lands.
At the beginning of the book, he gives readers an injunction to ‘read slowly’, as he goes on to explain the core understanding of where much of his work lies. Okri explains that the use of myth, legend, and folklore in his works stems from the need for rootedness and connection among people and their communities. While using a tone that is both hopeful and transcendent, he also wanted a language that was lyrical and precise.
Myth (with a capital M), Okri describes, is the foundation of a country’s literature. They are stories that need to be preserved and told so that we do not diminish our ability to rise to the challenges we are facing across the world, both now and in the future. Okri describes myth as a power of resistance in the form of a deeper kind of technology. The stories of myths and legends allow people to reorient themselves through language and truth.
Okri goes on to explain how myths compact the stories of a land into the absolute essentials that can be passed on to new generations. We can have a symbolic relationship with reality through the telling of myths. He discusses how children listen differently to myths than to other types of stories. This is evident in the way their bodies react and in the questions and conversations that follow. Although he is unable to name what it is exactly, Okri describes myths as ‘doing something that nothing else can do’.
Overall, I was captivated by Ben Okri’s talk. The way he could describe the innermost feelings and thoughts we humans can have was incredible to listen to. I could’ve continued to listen to his discussions for many hours.
