While a good book has the power to transport a reader, to read one by the Nigerian-born, London-based writer is to be transported not just to a different place or time, but also to a different way of seeing, thinking and believing.
The ''plot'' in Okri's work often seems secondary to the ideas he plays with, as is the case with his latest novella, In the Age of Magic.
In it, Okri combines the fantastical, philosophical and metaphysical as he takes the reader on a magical mystery tour along with his characters: a film crew travelling from London via Paris to Switzerland and making a documentary about a journey to Arcadia, both a place and an idea.
The journey to the promised land - its physical incarnation a Swiss mountain village - becomes something of a Faustian experience as the characters confront their demons, and their beliefs and relationships are tested.
The village seems idyllic, and there is enchantment and enlightenment to be found, but there are also sinister undercurrents, and the characters are in thrall to the call of the dangerously seductive silver lake.
No Okri novel has had quite the powerful effect on me as his Booker-winning The Famished Road, but the familiar worlds he evokes, a mix of fantasy and reality, full of allegory and magic, are highly imaginative, and his voice distinctive.
Only in an Okri work will you find phrases like: ''Dawn was the garden redeemed by sleep''
and a whole chapter in a single paragraph: ''Standing on the shore, they sensed a syllable streaming through all things. They heard the sustaining hum which seemed to originate in the depths of their hearts and in the farthest reaches of space. The hum washed through them and sweetened the taste of life.''
To read Okri is to become bewitched and surrender to his dream. When you come back to reality, you're not entirely sure what happened, but you feel richer for the experience.
- Helen Speirs is ODT books editor.
