It may be that I first knew of Ben Okri from the quote below, found on Denise's blog. I have not read him, though having seen him talk, however briefly, about his writing process, I look forward to doing so. He was awarded the Booker Prize in 1991 for THE FAMISHED ROAD.
He has been described as a magical realist, which I assume means the presence of events that cannot be explained in terms of the ordinary, or that cannot be explained at all. I am not sure where magical reality veers off the path of life as we know it, for I find life filled with much that defies explanation. Things happen and even if we know why, we often do not know how. Being able to let go of the how of things has freed me, day to day, from feeling responsible for finding answers where none exist. This may not be the world of which Mr. Okri writes, but from his quotes, I suspect it is at least close.
"We plan our lives according to a dream that came to us in our childhood, and we find that life alters our plans. And yet, at the end, from a rare height, we also see that our dream was our fate. It's just that providence had other ideas as to how we would get there. Destiny plans a different route, or turns the dream around, as if it were a riddle, and fulfills the dream in ways we couldn't have expected." ----Ben Okri
He has been described as a magical realist, which I assume means the presence of events that cannot be explained in terms of the ordinary, or that cannot be explained at all. I am not sure where magical reality veers off the path of life as we know it, for I find life filled with much that defies explanation. Things happen and even if we know why, we often do not know how. Being able to let go of the how of things has freed me, day to day, from feeling responsible for finding answers where none exist. This may not be the world of which Mr. Okri writes, but from his quotes, I suspect it is at least close.
"We plan our lives according to a dream that came to us in our childhood, and we find that life alters our plans. And yet, at the end, from a rare height, we also see that our dream was our fate. It's just that providence had other ideas as to how we would get there. Destiny plans a different route, or turns the dream around, as if it were a riddle, and fulfills the dream in ways we couldn't have expected." ----Ben Okri
