The Famished Road

AZARO IS A SPIRIT-CHILD. When he was born his another recognised him and this recognition brought her sadness. For the spirit-child is one who has not severed his links with the spirit world that most children abandon at birth, his memory of that idyllic life remains strong and he yearns to return, has promised to return to his spirit companions and to leave behind his parents and the world of the living. It is this knowledge that causes his parents' sorrow. Only now. Azaro is tired of coming and going, of being born and reborn, of never staying long enough to experience life. This time he decides to stay. This time he is resolved to make his mother smile.

The Famished Road sets out to explode conventional ideas of naturalistic reality as it follows Azaro's adventures through a world where reality and vision blur. Endowed with special powers that lead him periodically into mischief, pursued by his spirit friends who are reluctant to let him go, Azaro persuades us to see the world through his eyes — a teeming exuberant world crowded with heroes and villains and ordinary folk, with political shysters, debtors and creditors, landlords and tenants, fathers and sons. Ambitious in scope and execution, The Famished Road is a magical novel.