Prayer for the Living

Topical and timely, Booker Prize–winning author Ben Okri's new collection of short stories blurs parallel realities and walks the line between darkness and magic.

"A career-spanning story collection from the Booker Prize–winning Nigerian writer that navigates the blurry line between dream and reality...'Alternative Realities Are True' is a dimension-warping detective story worthy of Philip K. Dick, and 'Don Ki-Otah and the Ambiguity of Reading' is a Don Quixote satire whose metafictional gamesmanship evokes Borges and Achebe...Okri skillfully embeds abstract ideas in concrete, engaging storytelling...Mind-bending and provocative."
--Kirkus Reviews, STARRED Review

 "Booker-winner Okri delivers a sprawling collection that spans continents, centuries, and the border between the real and the supernatural...This is as an essential reminder of the timeless and vital nature of storytelling."
--Publishers Weekly

Playful, frightening, shocking--these stories from a writer at the height of his power will make you think, or make you laugh. Sometimes they’ll make you want to look away, but they will always hold your gaze.

These are stories set in London, in Byzantium, in the ghetto, in the Andes, and in a printer’s shop in Lagos. Characters include a murderer, a writer, a detective, a woman in a dream, a man in a mirror, a little girl, a prison door, and the author himself.

Each one of these twenty-four stories will make you wonder if what you see in the world can really be all there is . . .

• Prayer for the Living by Ben Okri
• Publisher: Akashic Books (February 2, 2021)
• Language: English
• Hardcover: 216 pages
• ISBN-10: 1617758639
• ISBN-13: 9781617758638
• Item Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Dimensions: 5.2 x 1 x 7.2 inches