The Famished Road by Ben Okri (1991). Azaro, the hero of Nigerian-born Okri’s spellbinding and hallucinatory novel, is a spirit child, or abiku, born to mortals. Though other spirits insist that he return to their comfy land, he chooses to stand by his suffering mother and bombastic, foolhardy father amid the poverty, violence, and instability of modern Africa. “It is more difficult to love than to die,” Azaro’s father says in this Booker Prize–winning novel that is equal parts dark mythology and political satire.
Total Points: 3 (DAD 3)