The Famished Road by Ben Okri

So, recently I've been reading or re-reading my way through a selection of past Booker Prize winners - yes, it's that time of year again, with this year's shortlist due to be announced on Tuesday 11th - and this past-winner caught my eye.

In part, I was intrigued by the wildly polarised array of reviews that this book has had; love it or hate it, marmite-style reviews. I also felt quite drawn to the promise of mysticism and a quote from a reviewer from The Times citing the novel as 'unlike anything you have ever read before', piqued my interest. The story of a spirit child born to live for just a short while but who decides to defy this destiny and stay in the living world; partly with a thirst to experience life and partly for the sake of his mother, sounded like a really interesting premise and refreshingly different from other novels I've read recently.

I wasn't disappointed.

'The Famished Road' won the Booker Prize for fiction in 1991 and I found it easy to see why. Ben Okri writes beautifully. His lyrical, poetic style is a delight to read. His use of language is at times literally breathtaking. As the reviewer for the Independent on Sunday wrote, 'Okri is incapable of writing a boring sentence.' Although there is an abundance of mystical reflection in this novel, and it is by no means a page-turner in the conventional sense, I yet felt compelled to keep reading. Some greater force - the force of powerful language - was keeping me hungry for more.

The flowery writing and mystical narrative was at times a little frustrating. I found I was intensely interested in the child, Azaro, and his small family; their poverty-stricken life of hardships, hunger, sorrows and joy moved me. I wanted to know more about the flattening of the surrounding forest and its effect, and the building of new compounds, about the arrival of electricity, about the changing world around them and the infiltration of outside influences. I wanted to know more about the story of the photo-journalist who took photos of everyday life and hardships, tragedies and politicians - a documentary life of his neighbours if you like - and who had these controversial pictures published in the local press. I had to do a little digging of my own to discover that the novel is set in Nigeria as this is never overtly mentioned. All-in-all, beautiful as it is, I'm sure I would have fallen in love with the book if it had a more even balance of mystical and harsh gritty reality. The intense concentration on mysticism left me feeling one step removed from seeing the whole - the poverty, politics, daily grind, myth, legend and mysticism, all combined - and instead feeling like I had only truly grasped a part of the picture.

The beautiful writing makes this a worthy read for anyone who appreciates world-class use of language, but its ethereal qualities may put off readers looking for something more solid, rather than spiritual. If you do read and enjoy it I recommend going back and re-reading the last chapter every now and then - its message is universal.