Format: Paperback
Pages: 177
ISBN: 9781846041594
Price: 350 INR

“Moments of genuine poetry and insight.”
– Guardian

From the Booker prize-winning author of ‘The Famished Road’ comes a book that both delights and puzzles the readers. Ben Okri, in this book, develops a supposedly new form of writing known as the stokus. He brings together poetry and story and a new kind of music is born! A stoku, he says, is an amalgam of short story and haiku. It is a story as it inclines towards a flash of moment, insight, vision or paradox.

TalesofFreedomThe first and longest story in this book is titled ‘The Comic Destiny’. It shows characters similar to Adam and Eve and could have very well been set in the Garden of Eden. In the story, the characters are called Old Man and Old Woman. What follows are several stories that are appropriately small and hence a delight to go through. ‘Music for a ruined city’ offers a melancholic tale- one that you never want to finish reading. ‘The Mysterious Anxiety of Them and Us’ presents an intriguing afternoon lunch by a mysterious host and nameless people, all begging for a bite of the buffet. ‘The Unseen Kingdom’ is a treat for readers with a book fair “where the books are treated like roses” and are laid open with crushed flowers on the pages to scent the air with those sweet words. ‘Wild Bulls’ offers a haunting whose read last sentence is sure to stay with you after completing the entire novella.

It is true: each tale is a tiny epic and a world in itself. When strung together, they form a necklace of enigmas and offer unusual glimpses of freedom. In a few pages, for a couple of seconds, the stories stir to life. Otherwise, they’re mere narrative. Mostly managing only to confuse the reader, but at the same time, you’ll be missing something if you don’t read it once. But not by much.

Rating: 7/10

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