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The Magic Lamp: Dreams of Our Age
Twenty-five stories, twenty-five paintings, five years to write, ten years to paint. This is an extraordinary collaboration between artist and the Booker Prize-winning writer Ben Okri and the painter Rosemary Clunie. Together they have created a world, and peopled it with dreams. Twenty-five fairy tales for adults, these narratives are a response to our times, informed by our world but not limited by it, imaginative, enchanting, haunting – both prescient and prophetic. Twenty-five original paintings, beautiful, playful, intimate, dreamlike, these works pull you in to a land of colour and vision. Who can say which came first, the word or image, when both grew together out of a long friendship and a creative symbiosis. What if Calvino and Magritte had combined inspiration? What if we could see our world again with a child's eyes? What if there really is a magic lamp?
105 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 7, 2017
11 people are currently reading
123 people want to read
About the author
Ben Okri
86 books995 followersPoet and novelist Ben Okri was born in 1959 in Minna, northern Nigeria, to an Igbo mother and Urhobo father. He grew up in London before returning to Nigeria with his family in 1968. Much of his early fiction explores the political violence that he witnessed at first hand during the civil war in Nigeria. He left the country when a grant from the Nigerian government enabled him to read Comparative Literature at Essex University in England.
He was poetry editor for West Africa magazine between 1983 and 1986 and broadcast regularly for the BBC World Service between 1983 and 1985. He was appointed Fellow Commoner in Creative Arts at Trinity College Cambridge in 1991, a post he held until 1993. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1987, and was awarded honorary doctorates from the universities of Westminster (1997) and Essex (2002).
His first two novels, Flowers and Shadows (1980) and The Landscapes Within (1981), are both set in Nigeria and feature as central characters two young men struggling to make sense of the disintegration and chaos happening in both their family and country. The two collections of stories that followed, Incidents at the Shrine (1986) and Stars of the New Curfew (1988), are set in Lagos and London.
In 1991 Okri was awarded the Booker Prize for Fiction for his novel The Famished Road (1991). Set in a Nigerian village, this is the first in a trilogy of novels which tell the story of Azaro, a spirit child. Azaro's narrative is continued in Songs of Enchantment (1993) and Infinite Riches (1998). Other recent fiction includes Astonishing the Gods (1995) and Dangerous Love (1996), which was awarded the Premio Palmi (Italy) in 2000. His latest novels are In Arcadia (2002) and Starbook (2007).
A collection of poems, An African Elegy, was published in 1992, and an epic poem, Mental Flight, in 1999. A collection of essays, A Way of Being Free, was published in 1997. Ben Okri is also the author of a play, In Exilus.
In his latest book, Tales of Freedom (2009), Okri brings together poetry and story.
Ben Okri is a Vice-President of the English Centre of International PEN, a member of the board of the Royal National Theatre, and was awarded an OBE in 2001. He lives in London.
He was poetry editor for West Africa magazine between 1983 and 1986 and broadcast regularly for the BBC World Service between 1983 and 1985. He was appointed Fellow Commoner in Creative Arts at Trinity College Cambridge in 1991, a post he held until 1993. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1987, and was awarded honorary doctorates from the universities of Westminster (1997) and Essex (2002).
His first two novels, Flowers and Shadows (1980) and The Landscapes Within (1981), are both set in Nigeria and feature as central characters two young men struggling to make sense of the disintegration and chaos happening in both their family and country. The two collections of stories that followed, Incidents at the Shrine (1986) and Stars of the New Curfew (1988), are set in Lagos and London.
In 1991 Okri was awarded the Booker Prize for Fiction for his novel The Famished Road (1991). Set in a Nigerian village, this is the first in a trilogy of novels which tell the story of Azaro, a spirit child. Azaro's narrative is continued in Songs of Enchantment (1993) and Infinite Riches (1998). Other recent fiction includes Astonishing the Gods (1995) and Dangerous Love (1996), which was awarded the Premio Palmi (Italy) in 2000. His latest novels are In Arcadia (2002) and Starbook (2007).
A collection of poems, An African Elegy, was published in 1992, and an epic poem, Mental Flight, in 1999. A collection of essays, A Way of Being Free, was published in 1997. Ben Okri is also the author of a play, In Exilus.
In his latest book, Tales of Freedom (2009), Okri brings together poetry and story.
Ben Okri is a Vice-President of the English Centre of International PEN, a member of the board of the Royal National Theatre, and was awarded an OBE in 2001. He lives in London.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
November 2, 2024
Lovely paintings, wondrous prose with haunting images, a tactile pleasure with the heavy, textured paper of the hardback edition. My favorite tales are Return to the City of Dreams and The Blue Crusade.
Memorable phrases from selected stories:
"What you call beauty is music in the soul.... Did you know there are gaps in time that Heaven falls through?"- Birdtalk in a Tentative World.
"He comes while our world is on its last page.... Our Vesuvius is in newsprint, in rumours and truth worse than rumours." - A Vanishing World
"A woman laced in blues and reds sprouted dark beautiful wings, under the astonished gaze of a gypsy child.... the age of magic has begun. Unveil your eyes. - L'Époque Magique
"Maybe we saw the world too well and could not see how it could be different. We came to think that the world we see is all there is." - Gazing into a Dream
"We acquired more knowledge of the world and less knowledge of ourselves. We knew more, but somehow we knew less." - The Blue Crusade
"Time to wander among the debris of human dreams." - Poet by the Sea
"I have often wondered how long it takes a people to see that which has always been there. It is as if, over the millennia, we acquire the eyes to see that which we need to see." - The Falcon Dreamer
"The bushes and the hidden bees in the flowers were full of the presence of the gods." - Those Enchanted Songs
"We are on the edge of a crisis now." - The Star Tree
"The grass stirs, and a heron considers the world with a question in the shape of its beak." - Prophecy
Memorable phrases from selected stories:
"What you call beauty is music in the soul.... Did you know there are gaps in time that Heaven falls through?"- Birdtalk in a Tentative World.
"He comes while our world is on its last page.... Our Vesuvius is in newsprint, in rumours and truth worse than rumours." - A Vanishing World
"A woman laced in blues and reds sprouted dark beautiful wings, under the astonished gaze of a gypsy child.... the age of magic has begun. Unveil your eyes. - L'Époque Magique
"Maybe we saw the world too well and could not see how it could be different. We came to think that the world we see is all there is." - Gazing into a Dream
"We acquired more knowledge of the world and less knowledge of ourselves. We knew more, but somehow we knew less." - The Blue Crusade
"Time to wander among the debris of human dreams." - Poet by the Sea
"I have often wondered how long it takes a people to see that which has always been there. It is as if, over the millennia, we acquire the eyes to see that which we need to see." - The Falcon Dreamer
"The bushes and the hidden bees in the flowers were full of the presence of the gods." - Those Enchanted Songs
"We are on the edge of a crisis now." - The Star Tree
"The grass stirs, and a heron considers the world with a question in the shape of its beak." - Prophecy
January 16, 2021
This is a short story collection in which every story has an accompanying piece of artwork inspired by said story.
The artwork is beautiful and the stories very poetic with an almost dream-like quality about them.
The artwork is beautiful and the stories very poetic with an almost dream-like quality about them.
August 26, 2018
The paintings are beautiful, and the stories are poetic and become an even better experience when read aloud, which I guess is the best way to read a fable. Although I didn't enjoy all the stories, I give it 5 stars because I enjoyed flicking through the paintings and resting on a particular story here and there, and trying to see how Okri got the story from the painting. I went to see Ben Okri at the Edinburgh Book Festival recently (where I got this book) and he performed one of the stories accompanied by an interpretive dancer. Although I don't pretend to fully understand interpretive dance, or connect with it very often, I liked how he continued the blurring of the arts from this book (both writing and painting) with an additional art of dancing too. So even if you don't enjoy the stories alone, or the paintings alone, together - along with your imagination - they merge to create something beautiful.
March 15, 2018
I picked this up purely for the gorgeous artwork, and I liked the idea of artist and author collaborations- creating stories out of art. Illustration in reverse so to speak. Unfortunately though, these stories were just trying too hard to be deep and philosophical. I found them way too abstract and surreal- I took very little from them. I mean, one story was talking about a woman taking a fish for a walk.... what was I reading?!
July 21, 2018
For magic realism to work it needs to be working against reality. Whist the paintings in this book are beautiful and the writing is very lyrical, it is unrelentingly obscure. I do not have a problem with an author requiring to me to be rigourous with my reading but I have to have a point of reference to work from. Even the premise of the magic lamp writing the stories and painting the pictures: is this an extended metaphor/motif or am I expected to believe that all this work literally came out of nowehere and was just compiled? In the end I just couldn't finish this.
December 14, 2017
The Magic Lamp : Dreams are not Fairy Tales
I received "The Magic Lamp: Dreams of Our Age" by Ben Okri [1] for my birthday back in October and I was excited. I read "The Famished Road" in 1992 shortly after it came out and loved the blend of magic and everyday life. So the idea of "twenty-five fairy tales for adults" as the publishers blurb claimed, was a real temptation. Indeed, Ben Okri talked about the need for fairy tales for our time and called the collection fairy stories when he spoke about the book on BBC Radio 4.
So I cleared my desk and launched in. But I was disappointed.
The writing is lyrical, the imagery poetic, the stories dream-like, but with a very few exceptions later in the book these don't even come close to being fairy stories.
Of course, a lot could depend on the definition of "Fairy Tale" and that's a subject that can be discussed at great length. Wikipedia (which is never wrong about anything) says "A fairy tale is a type of short story that typically features folkloric fantasy characters, such as dwarfs, dragons, elves, fairies, giants, gnomes, goblins, griffins, mermaids, talking animals, trolls, unicorns, or witches, and usually magic or enchantments" [2] and it is true that these stories are magical, but they are more like sketches which is exactly as they should be: they are dreamings.
So I'm confused! I really liked this book, but I'm really disappointed. I think it was miss-sold. It was like sitting down to eat in a swanky restaurant, ordering a fine meal, preparing your taste buds and your stomach, and then getting served Christmas pudding and custard instead. Now, Christmas pudding is your favourite, but it was not what you were expecting.
Actually, I think I hold the publisher responsible for some of this. Certainly they market the book as fairy stories and for early readers (before the reviews are out) what the publisher says is all we have to go by.
The publisher makes a number of mistakes in how this book is presented. Probably the most annoying are the little coloured splodges that appear randomly on the pages of text and contain snippets (apparently equally randomly chosen) from the stories. These are distracting and pointless: this is not a magazine, we don't need to be baited into reading articles about how to spice up our teeth-cleaning routines, it's a serious work of literature.
It is also a shame, in my opinion, that the publisher has cut up Rosemary Clunie's fine pictures and used them as background to the text and as page fillers. In fact, I think the pictures may deserve a better showing than is possible in a book of this size, but they do look good.
A final beef is with the way that several stories run over onto the next page by just two or three lines, and it is really disrupting for the reader. And this is not even necessary given the amount of white space available.
So, in summary, this book contains some great artwork and some exquisite writing. It's strong enough to survive what the publisher has done to it, but it's a shame.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Magic-Lamp-Dre...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairy_tale
I received "The Magic Lamp: Dreams of Our Age" by Ben Okri [1] for my birthday back in October and I was excited. I read "The Famished Road" in 1992 shortly after it came out and loved the blend of magic and everyday life. So the idea of "twenty-five fairy tales for adults" as the publishers blurb claimed, was a real temptation. Indeed, Ben Okri talked about the need for fairy tales for our time and called the collection fairy stories when he spoke about the book on BBC Radio 4.
So I cleared my desk and launched in. But I was disappointed.
The writing is lyrical, the imagery poetic, the stories dream-like, but with a very few exceptions later in the book these don't even come close to being fairy stories.
Of course, a lot could depend on the definition of "Fairy Tale" and that's a subject that can be discussed at great length. Wikipedia (which is never wrong about anything) says "A fairy tale is a type of short story that typically features folkloric fantasy characters, such as dwarfs, dragons, elves, fairies, giants, gnomes, goblins, griffins, mermaids, talking animals, trolls, unicorns, or witches, and usually magic or enchantments" [2] and it is true that these stories are magical, but they are more like sketches which is exactly as they should be: they are dreamings.
So I'm confused! I really liked this book, but I'm really disappointed. I think it was miss-sold. It was like sitting down to eat in a swanky restaurant, ordering a fine meal, preparing your taste buds and your stomach, and then getting served Christmas pudding and custard instead. Now, Christmas pudding is your favourite, but it was not what you were expecting.
Actually, I think I hold the publisher responsible for some of this. Certainly they market the book as fairy stories and for early readers (before the reviews are out) what the publisher says is all we have to go by.
The publisher makes a number of mistakes in how this book is presented. Probably the most annoying are the little coloured splodges that appear randomly on the pages of text and contain snippets (apparently equally randomly chosen) from the stories. These are distracting and pointless: this is not a magazine, we don't need to be baited into reading articles about how to spice up our teeth-cleaning routines, it's a serious work of literature.
It is also a shame, in my opinion, that the publisher has cut up Rosemary Clunie's fine pictures and used them as background to the text and as page fillers. In fact, I think the pictures may deserve a better showing than is possible in a book of this size, but they do look good.
A final beef is with the way that several stories run over onto the next page by just two or three lines, and it is really disrupting for the reader. And this is not even necessary given the amount of white space available.
So, in summary, this book contains some great artwork and some exquisite writing. It's strong enough to survive what the publisher has done to it, but it's a shame.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Magic-Lamp-Dre...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairy_tale
December 24, 2024
The book is a collection of fairy tales for adults a in and the reader cannd a colloboration between Ben Okri and his artist friend Rosemary Clunie - the former responsible for the prose and the latter the paintings. Each work reflects the other.
The twnty five fairy tales are a response of the times in which we are currently living and the reader can relate the stories to events, e.g. 9/11 and climate change. The stories are sometimes profound and yet enchanting whilst still transmitting a message to society
A dreamlike and beautiful book one you would always want to keep.
The twnty five fairy tales are a response of the times in which we are currently living and the reader can relate the stories to events, e.g. 9/11 and climate change. The stories are sometimes profound and yet enchanting whilst still transmitting a message to society
A dreamlike and beautiful book one you would always want to keep.
March 4, 2021
I love the poetic writing by Okri and the images are lovely to look at but mostly the stories where colour is very explicitly references (to connect them to the images?) are not my favourites. I really liked "The Star Tree" and "Gazing into a Dream".
March 3, 2018
Short and at times illuminating, it appears that Okri is suggesting we go through life without truly sensing or living it. At times it is just a little too deep
November 17, 2017
It is a sparse book of stories filled with immense beauty. At times, illuminatingly moving.
January 22, 2018
Some of these stories are truly inspired while others are tedious. Overall it is brilliant.
August 7, 2018
I loved the short almost poetry/prophecy/fable like pieces of writing and and the paintings - I almost felt like I was dreaming when I read this book. very etherial.
March 5, 2021
i did like a lot of these stories just don’t think short stories are for me
November 12, 2021
I love the underlying messages written in each words. I use this book as my lullaby coz it soothe me. The words been used left me astound. The illustration really give an extra kick to the book
June 20, 2023
Interesting concept. The paintings are really well done but they leave the writing to feel lacklustre.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews