The Freedom Artist

The Freedom Artist

An impassioned plea for freedom and justice, set in a world uncomfortably like our own, by the Booker-winner Ben Okri. “A perfect read for a post-truth era.” ― NPR In a world uncomfortably like our own, a young woman called Amalantis is arrested for asking a question. Her question is this:  Who is the Prisoner? When Amalantis disappears, her lover Karnak goes looking for her. He searches desperately at first, then with a growing realization that to find Amalantis, he must first understand the meaning of her question.Karnak’s search leads him into a terrifying world of deception, oppression, and fear at the heart of which lies the prison. Then Karnak discovers that he is not the only one looking for the truth. The Freedom Artist  is an impassioned plea for justice and a penetrating examination of how freedom is threatened in a post-truth society. In Ben Okri’s most significant novel since the Booker Prize–winning  The Famished Road , he delivers a powerful and haunting call to arms. " The Freedom Artist . . . can be read as a kind of revision of Plato’s allegory of the cave, in which art, rather than offering distracting illusions, can tap into foundational truths and help us free ourselves from the prison of existence. The concise, declarative prose and the parable-like architecture of the stories resemble ancient forms of wisdom literature." ― Wall Street Journal "With a slow burn arc emblematic of Toni Cade Bambara’s The Salt Eaters , and prophetic warnings of apocalypse akin to Octavia Butler’s The Parable of the Sower , The Freedom Artist offers a contemplative look at post-truth society." ― Sierra Magazine "Haunting and inspiring . . . In this story of political abuse and existential angst, Okri employs a powerful and rare style reminiscent of free verse and evoking a mythical timbre. This is a vibrantly immediate and penetrating novel of ideas.”" ― Publishers Weekly, Starred Review "Like George Orwell and Margaret Atwood before him, the Booker Prize–winning Okri writes a passionate cri de coeur, a clarion call to activists everywhere to resist apathy and recognize that we are all on this beautiful globe together and that it is ours to lose." ― Library Journal "Okri’s somber, fablelike novel is a call to rally against oppressive institutions and for broader social consciousness. In that regard, it’s an inheritor of The Handmaid’s Tale , Fahrenheit 451 , and Things Fall Apart . . . Okri’s writing is sturdy and graceful, fully inhabiting the authoritative tone of mythmaking." ― Kirkus Reviews BEN OKRI was born in Minna, Nigeria. His childhood was divided between Nigeria, where he saw firsthand the consequences of war, and London. He won the Booker Prize in 1991 for  The Famished Road, and his novel  Astonishing the Gods  was selected as one of the BBC’s “100 Novels That Shaped Our World.” His work has been translated into more than twenty-five languages. He also writes plays and screenplays. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a vice president of English PEN, and has been awarded the OBE as well as numerous international prizes and honorary doctorates. His latest novel,  The Freedom Artist , was published by Akashic Books.  Prayer for the Living  is his latest short story collection.