The Freedom Artist

The story is set in a dystopian world where books have disappeared for a long time. The people are encouraged to be average, sad and unthinking. So far it sounds familiarly Orwellian but it diverges from Orwell's1984 in several ways. For example, the government called Hierarchy is just as disorderly......more

Can a book start a revolution? Ben Okri’s The Freedom Artist certainly intends to. The novel is an ardent entreaty to every single person in the world, an appeal to let go of their meaningless lives and rebel against expected but often nonsensical societal norms. Okri stands in the midst of an increa......more

A book by Ben Okri is worth waiting for. This one is no exception. It is a meditation upon the role of mythology in our culture. But Okri is not the kind of author who would do this as an academic exercise. He creates a world, very much like ours, and builds its own mythology. He starts from the bas......more

The Freedom Artist is a very poetical novel with short chapters and simple declarative sentences that read like free verse. It is primarily about a young man named Karnak who loved Amalantis, a young woman who asked: “Who is the prisoner?” and is taken away, but who took her away and where. He becom......more