In his latest novel, Ben Okri asks what it is to live life

BOOKER prize-winning writer Ben Okri creates a magnificent magical-realist world in his latest book. Symbolically titled The Age of Magic, it is a surreal tale of a film crew on a journey to a symbolic Arcadia, a place that can roughly be described as a private paradise of sorts for each individual. Set in a mysterious and haunted village in the mountain region of Switzerland, the book revolves around eight filmmakers who find themselves enchanted by the luminous lake near their hotel.

There’s an enthralling beauty to the primal setting of the village which lowers their guards and inhibitions: “The silence of mountains makes inward troubles apparent”. Over the next few days each of them encounters their innermost fears and dreams, an experience that both enlightens and transforms them.

At first, they do “not notice how the journey was altering them”. Strange things start happening to them: they catch glimpses of the devil; see mythical creatures, and discover fleeting magical powers.

Lao is the main narrator who is always trying to untangle various situations and people he encounters on his journey. He believes that all of them have not only brought their luggage with them but their personal invisible baggage as well. “He saw how, in not living in the present, life was always slipping from him … ‘our past obscures our future’, Lao thought, grimly. ‘We travel forwards, but live backwards. Travelling is no escape; only the panorama changes. We are stuck in ourselves’.”

He is the first to notice the change in Jim. The director used to be a mild man but transforms during their journey into an ambitious one, championing the supremacy of individual will and is ready to sell his soul to the devil. Lao is a little disconcerted by this transformation: “It seemed to him that Jim was possessed, and that a hint of evil had brought out his true personality”. However, Jim is not the only one who changes; all of the characters soon enough realise they are not the same anymore.

Strangely enough, they can’t put their finger on the precise moment when this idea of a journey to Arcadia took root. Some of them feel this journey was forced upon them by a malicious being, Malasso, whom they have never really met. Lao, on the other hand, believes that he is a figment of their collective subconscious as a group. Is Malasso “the guiding force” of their adventure or a group entity? Are they victims of their own creation? Lao also believes that their past has a demonic hold on all of them, leaving them unable to ever truly leave it behind even when they embark on a journey to escape those very demons.

For Okri “the inverse of the word live is evil” and this struggle between life and evil is the predominant theme of The Age of Magic. Structurally, the book is divided into small chapters, usually of a couple of pages, which remind me of the traditional popular works of mystic wisdom. Okri builds each chapter/theme with impressive skill and vividness which carries the reader on a leisurely but enthralling reading journey.

The characters appear as half-formed sketches that become more tangible as the book and journey progress. However, the story or the characters are not the primary focus of Okri’s narrative; he uses their frequent discussions and subjective musings to touch upon various themes that can be roughly connected to what it is to live life.

The reader, along with the characters, leaves the conventional tools of apprehension behind because Okri constructs a fantastical world where ordinary points of comparison disappear, leaving behind a feeling of the sublime. However, this sublimity of Arcadia is different from the transcendental desired by generations of poets; it’s a fleeting experience of one’s true self until the real life catches up. Reality, it seems, “is the greatest misunderstanding of them all”. However, Okri seems to whisper through his languidly beautiful words that this magnified insight into one’s self, no matter how fleeting, is worth the journey.

There are some strange similarities between the magical realist worlds of Okri and Murakami: the characters enter these worlds unknowingly and both worlds are like uncanny lucid dreams. However, with Murakami you feel like you’ve entered a parallel universe with its own dynamics in your subconscious mind; a world that is at the same time real and unreal. Okri, on the other hand, creates a mystified, albeit episodic, world through which the characters gain deep revelations into their inner, most subjective selves.

If Murakami’s gritty magical realism intrigues you, Okri’s hazy magical realism leaves you reflective and spellbound. Both, however, manage to confuse you a little because you can never be certain what they really intended to convey to us readers. But then Okri does not create this fantastical world to supplement the real world, but to go beyond the ideas of reality and fiction; to explore the raw truth of collective human existence as well as subjectivity.

Okri’s poetically and metaphysically rich writing makes you appreciate the impalpable beauty of literary language. Okri’s flowing narrative, profound language, and the fascinating setting endow an ethereal quality to the story which surpasses any pseudo-mystic novel.

The Age of Magic

(NOVEL)

By Ben Okri

Head of Zeus, UK

ISBN 978-1784081478

288pp.