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Cargando... The Freedom Artist (2019)por Ben Okri
   Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro.  juniperSun | Apr 21, 2024 |    Esta reseña ha sido escrita por los Primeros Reseñadores de LibraryThing. ) dianeham | Oct 6, 2020 | Esta reseña ha sido escrita por los Primeros Reseñadores de LibraryThing.Karnak, Ruslana, and others live in city. People are screaming at night, the non-screamers are being taken away, and more. Karak's girlfriend has been taken. The city is ruled by the heirarchy, and has been for generations. It is very dystopian but also clearly an allegory for something--sometimes it seems to be referencing the current world (especially the dumbing down of society), but I could never quite figure it out. The second storyline involves the boy Mirababa. After his grandfather's death he is next in line to replace him, and is being trained by the bards. In the end these two stories seem to connect, but I really didn't get it. I've read some reviews of this online, looking for clues, but either no one is dropping spoilers or no one else understands it either. ( )1  Dreesie | Jun 28, 2020 | Esta reseña ha sido escrita por los Primeros Reseñadores de LibraryThing. ) BooksForYears | Jun 12, 2020 | Esta reseña ha sido escrita por los Primeros Reseñadores de LibraryThing.Like the Wall Street Journal comments, this has a strong link to Plato's Allegory of the Cave as well as a vein of dystopian fiction including The Handmaid's Tale and Fahrenheit 451. Anyone familiar with these will easily see the similarities. The issue will be how well Okri succeeds in his addition to the literature. The writing is, as I have come to expect, quite good. There is a spareness that both propels the narrative while also highlighting the sense of helplessness in the face of an evil regime (similar to the US under the current regime but not nearly so helpless). There is what seems like a lot of repetition but it didn't bother me as much as it did some other readers. I think because I expect repetition in both allegorical work and free verse, so I took it in stride. That said, it is not what we have become accustomed to and can put some readers off. Because of the nature of the work and what Okri is doing politically and socially with the work, characters are going to be less fleshed out since they are there to promote thought and analysis about the big picture rather than simply about the plight of one or two people in that picture. Again, off putting to some but part of the style Okri chose. Of the stories, I personally found more enjoyment, such as it is, in the more abstract story, the one that might, to some eyes, resemble magical realism. This is a quick read (though, like with many such books, I recommend slowing down) and I do believe that it can speak volumes even to those who may not care for the work as a novel. This is not a long slog that you might hope has an important message, this can be a quick think piece. Bracket whatever you have come to expect and even desire in a novel and give this one a chance on its own terms, it will be well worth the effort. Having said that, if you know you don't like works that don't conform to whatever your usual reads do, then maybe this won't appeal to you regardless of the message. Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via LibraryThing Early Reviewers. (  ) pomo58 | Mar 25, 2020 |
In striving for profundity Okri often over-reaches. His desire to mix and match creation myths and parables from across the world leads to a nebulous mush of New-Agey concepts such as the infinite light that connects all things ... The novel’s heightened, fable-like quality also means that Okri’s world never feels grounded or real. I’m sure this is deliberate, after all The Freedom Artist is an allegory, but it does mean I struggled to care about the characters ... And yet, I couldn’t help but be entertained by The Freedom Artist. It has all the naïve boldness of a debut novel, an author throwing a kitchen sink of ideas at the page to see which ones will stick. Some are bizarre, such as the novel’s dizzying lurch toward horror as the Hierarchy, out of desperation, unleash a special force of cannibals wearing jackal masks (yes, you read that correctly) to gobble down any dissidents. But when the ideas do land, they are tremendous ... a deep appreciation of literature, storytelling, and flights of the imagination; a condemnation of the tendency to dumb down great works of art; and the overriding message that true freedom can be found in the pages of a book. The nature of reality has long preoccupied Okri. In a 2011 interview with The National, he said, "We like to think that the world is rational and precise and exactly how we see it, but something erupts in our reality which makes us sense that there's more to the fabric of life." He added that he was "fascinated by the mysterious element that runs through our lives. Everyone is looking out of the world through their emotion and history. Nobody has an absolute reality." ...But what happens when a dominant culture, or a powerful hierarchy, makes decisions about what is real and what is not? How long until the consequences of those decisions — impossible to maintain forever — come to bear upon the nature of reality as a whole? I'd argue that we're experiencing those consequences right now, in what some call this post-truth era, where switching between two TV channels can mean switching between two entirely different realities....The Freedom Artist fits no exact genre: It's about a near and terrible future, where humanity has accepted the Hierarchy — a faceless, undefined entity — that regulates everything and deploys police to arrest anyone who dares question its decisions....throughout, as the society living under the Hierarchy is plagued by fits of nightly wailing, daily weeping, and an increased blood-lust, I found myself asking two deeply upsetting questions: How do we avoid becoming like this? Are we already too late? ...Hope is everywhere in it, because its very form — storytelling — is a slap in the face to the terror looming over it. This haunting and inspiring novel from Booker winner Okri (The Famished Road) follows a man’s search for a woman who goes missing in a dystopian world. An oppressive and faceless “Hierarchy” dominates the world, in which people move through their days in a state of near-catatonia, sensing but helplessly fearing their subjugation....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. 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. Unlike those novels, though, the story is sparer, with only the barest scaffold of characterization and plot....Okri’s writing is sturdy and graceful, fully inhabiting the authoritative tone of mythmaking; the grotesque imagery of institutional savagery in its latter chapters is harrowing. Yet the structure of the book is so simple, and its twists so modest, that the story has trouble sustaining itself at novel length. Okri reiterates the same laments for lost wisdom, and the book’s climactic calls for education and self-awareness are so familiar, with bromides about how our social problems start with us, that the novel edges into hectoring, wake-up-sheeple territory.
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. To find Amalantis, he must first understand the meaning of her question. Karnak's search leads him into a terrifying world of lies, 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. No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
Antiguo miembro de Primeros reseñadores de LibraryThingEl libro The Freedom Artist de Ben Okri estaba disponible desde LibraryThing Early Reviewers.  Debates activosNingunoCubiertas populares
 Google Books — Cargando...GénerosSistema Decimal Melvil (DDC)823.92Literature English & Old English literatures English fiction Modern Period 2000-Clasificación de la Biblioteca del CongresoValoraciónPromedio: (3.61)
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Did not finish (truth be told, barely begun). I have read other African writers who made an impression on me; maybe having the physical book would have helped. (