The Famished Road

The Famished Road offers the profound insight: 'So long as we are alive, so long as we feel, so long as we love, everything in us is an energy we can use.'

The narrator, Azaro, is an abiku, a spirit child who, in the Yoruba tradition of Nigeria, exists between life and death. He is born into a world of poverty, ignorance, and injustice, yet Azaro awakens with a smile on his face. Nearly called back to the land of the dead, he is resurrected. However, in their efforts to save their child, Azaro's loving parents are made destitute.

The tension between the land of the living, with its violence and political struggles, and the temptations of the carefree kingdom of the spirits propels this latter-day Lazarus's story. Despite belonging to a spirit world filled with enchantment, where there is no suffering, Azaro chooses to stay in the land of the living—to feel it, endure it, know it, and love it.

This is his story.