Larger than life

Ben Okri won the Booker Prize for Fiction for his novel The Famished Road in 1991.

Looking back at the shortlist for that year, I was surprised to discover another of my favourite novels of the Nineties on the list of novels that never made it to the shortlist: Hanif Kureishi’s The Buddha of Suburbia.

But I loved Ben Okri’s story of Azaro, the “spirit child”. Reviewing the novel in the Sunday Times, Angela Carter said: “Azaro’s scary, awesome, hallucinated childhood is a piece of sustained invention that turns out to be glorious...” At around 500 pages, it seems to be a novel readers love or hate – are captivated and can’t put it down or remain unmoved and simply can’t get through it.

The “famished road” of the title is metaphorical and suggests an African nation’s imminent independence and the chaotic and often destructive social, political and technological changes already underway.

It has been diversely characterised as postmodern, post-colonial and magical realist – a label Okri has always rejected. He has said that he draws on realism and philosophy, and traditional African storytelling and beliefs.

These are from a series of illustrations of characters from the novel. I wanted to capture something of their startling and unsettling power, as well as how vividly they came across to me reading the novel.

The first two characters are quite minor. They’re the king’s bodyguards. The king of the spirit world is described as “a great cat with a red beard and eyes of greenish sapphire”. The dashiki  (one of the names for the loose shirt or robe men traditionally wear in West African countries) and kufi (one of the names for the round cap) that the men wear are not very accurate and many of the fabrics are actually far more detailed and beautiful than I’ve imagined. Like many of my sketches at the time, and perhaps suitable to a “fantasy” novel, these weren’t done in a realistic, but in a naive style.

And this is Madame Koto and the boxer who Azaro’s dad takes on. The very heavy and larger than life Madame Koto almost makes the boxer appear skinny. The local bar owner, Madame Koto introduces electricity to the community. She is generous but vain, powerful and increasingly corrupt.

You can read more about Ben Okri's writing at: http://literature.britishcouncil.org and http://www.thenewcanon.com (and on Wikipedia). Or you can pick up the novel...

A little vampire

This little vampire was created by one of my students who was a whiteboard whizz and crazy about manga and anime.

She created a few of these chibi over the three years I taught in the Middle East – at break or at the end of the day, crowded round by a group of younger girls, oohing and aahing their approval.

This little vampire stayed up for weeks and weeks as I was under strict instruction from my form not to erase it. One of my quietest students, always doodling during lessons herself, took it upon herself to personally guard our classroom chibi against any colouring in or scribbles, checking at the end of each day and carefully erasing any mischief-making.

Much later, after I’d left the school, I thought I’d give her something in return. I’d never drawn any manga and wouldn’t have known where to begin but I thought I’d have a go, using her characters to guide me, just for fun. So this is my attempt.

And I had such fun with it that weekend, my niece (who was nine at the time) and I sitting drawing characters for hours together. Who knew what a doodle would lead to?

(And, since all that doodling has lead to my whiteboard whizz studying multimedia design this year, I look forward to seeing what else it leads to...)

African All Stars

And a favourite local design. Found this postcard at a shop in Long Street. Love it!

You can get in touch with Star Cards at: info@starcards.co.za

Iditarod dogs

These are from a collage that I’m making for my niece.

She’d recently watched a documentary on the Iditarod (the great sled dog race in Alaska) and was inspired to create her own Iditarod with the family dogs at home in South Africa.  She harnessed her motley team of four and roped them together with their leashes, then tried a bit of mushing – and cajoling with a carrot! (They’re very healthy – they snack on carrots.) But they didn’t get very far. Her lead dog actually froze – she sat down stiffly and simply refused to budge!

So I began to think of another expedition that the dogs might enjoy – running across the beach, following their leader who would be marching on ahead, singing to them. A little more Pied Piper...

They do prefer rolling in the sand and lolling about...