Dangerous Love
1 journaler for this copy...
Journal Entry 1 by anathema-device from Wien Bezirk 20 - Brigittenau, Wien Austria on Tuesday, May 9, 2006
The blurb says,
"An epic of daily life, "Dangerous Love" is Ben Okri's most accessible and most disarming novel yet. It is a story of doomed love, of star-crossed lovers, separated not by their families, but by the very circumstances of their lives."
But this is no simple kitsch novel. It is about a man living in the slums of Lagos, who falls in love with a married woman. I remember having read a short story by Ben Okri for a lecture called "(Post)Colonial Short Stories" and having liked the style as well as the content. I'm already curious about this book; there seems to be a whole complex world behind the tacky title...
"An epic of daily life, "Dangerous Love" is Ben Okri's most accessible and most disarming novel yet. It is a story of doomed love, of star-crossed lovers, separated not by their families, but by the very circumstances of their lives."
But this is no simple kitsch novel. It is about a man living in the slums of Lagos, who falls in love with a married woman. I remember having read a short story by Ben Okri for a lecture called "(Post)Colonial Short Stories" and having liked the style as well as the content. I'm already curious about this book; there seems to be a whole complex world behind the tacky title...
Journal Entry 2 by anathema-device from Wien Bezirk 20 - Brigittenau, Wien Austria on Friday, June 9, 2006
After something like a whole month I finally decided I'd give it a try.
And - surprise!?? - it's a great book! I don't have much time for private reading ATM (or at least I _shouldn't_), but even after a few pages I already loved it!
I'd even compare it (its style, and its point(s) of view) with J. M. Coetzee's "Slow Man" - except that I like this one better (!!) :)
For your better understanding, I'll copy out the Author's Note at the end of the novel:
"In 1981, I published a novel called "The Landscapes Within". "Dangerous Love" has its origins in that novel. That early work, its story, its characters and themes, the Nigeria that it depicted, was very close to me then and has continued to haunt and trouble me through the years, because in its spirit and essence I sensed that it was incomplete.
I was twenty-one when the novel was finished. I poured my heart into the book; but the heart alone isn't enough, in art as well as in life. I had wanted to write a novel which celebrated the small details of life as well as the great, the inner as well as the outer. I had wanted to be faithful to life as lived in the round, and yet to tell a worthwhile story. The many things I wanted to accomplish were too ambitious for my craft at the time.
I came to see that novel as the key to much of my past work, and perhaps also to my future, and became sure that it would not let me go until I had at least tried to redeem it. Many years passed before I took up the raw material again and from that grew this new work. "Dangerous Love" is the fruit of much restlessness. I hope that I have, at last, managed to free its spirit.
Ben Okri
January 1996"
And - surprise!?? - it's a great book! I don't have much time for private reading ATM (or at least I _shouldn't_), but even after a few pages I already loved it!
I'd even compare it (its style, and its point(s) of view) with J. M. Coetzee's "Slow Man" - except that I like this one better (!!) :)
For your better understanding, I'll copy out the Author's Note at the end of the novel:
"In 1981, I published a novel called "The Landscapes Within". "Dangerous Love" has its origins in that novel. That early work, its story, its characters and themes, the Nigeria that it depicted, was very close to me then and has continued to haunt and trouble me through the years, because in its spirit and essence I sensed that it was incomplete.
I was twenty-one when the novel was finished. I poured my heart into the book; but the heart alone isn't enough, in art as well as in life. I had wanted to write a novel which celebrated the small details of life as well as the great, the inner as well as the outer. I had wanted to be faithful to life as lived in the round, and yet to tell a worthwhile story. The many things I wanted to accomplish were too ambitious for my craft at the time.
I came to see that novel as the key to much of my past work, and perhaps also to my future, and became sure that it would not let me go until I had at least tried to redeem it. Many years passed before I took up the raw material again and from that grew this new work. "Dangerous Love" is the fruit of much restlessness. I hope that I have, at last, managed to free its spirit.
Ben Okri
January 1996"
