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Songs of Enchantment
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| List Price: | £8.99 |
| Price: | £5.78 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Delivery on orders over £5. Details |
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Product Description
One great thought can change the dreams of the world. One great action, lived out all the way to the sea, can change the history of the world.
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #292737 in Books
- Published on: 1994-02-17
- Original language: English
- Binding: Paperback
- 304 pages
Editorial Reviews
Guardian
‘Triumphant…Songs of Enchantment is a good, joyful and entertaining read’
Time
‘A prodigious talent’
The Times
‘Ben Okri writes beautifully’
Customer Reviews
Animism in action
Somebody please give this novel 4 stars because 3 is too little but I am stingy.
The book is a follow-up to The Famished Road, a 5-star work of originality. Same people, same setting: another month in the lives of the spirit-child and mum and "dementedly concentrated" dad in a Nigerian village out of time.
The main problems I have with Songs of Enchantment is that it smells a bit of left-over notes, the number of aberrations is a bit large, and the story in physical reality is a bit weak which all together result in a novel less bouyant.
However, Ben Okri is concerned with that which makes a thing or phenomena an entity, separate from the black abstract. He describes things and moods in terms of what holds it together, giving uniqueness, and what the purpose of it is. And he attempts to illustrate how an awareness of the spirit of things can help us improve life. How to "re-dream the world". That is a worthy purpose indeed.
And occasionally his prose is really good - Eugine Onegin entered my mind a couple of times - but when the aberrations grow he looses it.
