In Conversation: On Prayer for the Living

Anderson Tepper is co-chair of the international committee of the Brooklyn Book Festival and has served on the advisory committee of the PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature. He has written on books and authors for a variety of publications, including The New York Times Book Review, Vanity Fair, Air Mail, Tin House, and Words without Borders. 

Ben Okri was born in Minna, Nigeria. His childhood was divided between Nigeria, where he saw firsthand the consequences of war, and London. His The Famished Road won the Booker Prize. He has published eleven novels, four volumes of short stories, four books of essays, and four collections of poems. He also writes plays and screenplays. His previous novel was The Freedom Artist. In Prayer for the Living (Akashic Books) the stories are set in London, in Byzantium, in the ghetto, in the Andes, and in a printer’s shop in Spain. Characters include a murderer, a writer, a detective, a man in a cave, a man in a mirror, three little boys, a prison door, and the author himself. Each one of these twenty-three stories by Ben Okri will make you wonder if what you see in the world can really be all there is. The review in the Daily Mail (UK) noted “Okri is always good company and these twenty-odd tales showcase his lucid prose and freewheeling imagination. The settings range from the Andes to Nigeria, and the common thread is that what you see is only part of the story […] A literary magic-carpet ride of shimmering beauty.”