Tough Alchemy of Ben Okri

Rosemary Alice Gray is Emeritus Professor in the Department of English at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. She is Managing Editor of the English Academy Review: Journal of English Studies and her previous publications include Broken Strings: The Politics of Poetry, Light Comes out of the Darkness, A Glass Half Full or Half Empty: The Challenges of Elections and Succession in Africa and Sounding Wings: Short Stories from Africa (edited with Stephen Finn).

• PrefaceForewordAcknowledgementsPART I: The Alchemy of Life: ‘To find life in myth and myth in life’ (Birds of Heaven 1996)1.1 Ben Okri’s aphorisms: ‘Music on the wings of a soaring bird’1.2 Epistemic ecology and the ‘diminishing boundaries of a shrinking world’ in ‘Heraclitus’ Golden River’ from Wild 1.3 Ontopoiesis in Okri’s poetic oeuvre and A Time for New Dreams 1.4 Recovering our true state of being in ‘The Comic Destiny’PART II: Rebalancing the triadic elements of life2.1 Apologia pro In Arcadia: A neglected masterpiece?2.2 ‘Domesticating infinity’ in Mental Fight and Astonishing the Gods2.3 Redreaming ways of seeing: Intuitive creativity in The Landscapes Within 2.4 Promoting the poetic cause in ‘stokus’ from Tales of FreedomPART III: The mercurial imaginary: The writer as demiurge (artist/ craftsman)3.1 Sowing ‘a quilt of harmony’: Eco-phenomenology in ‘Lines in Potentis’ 3.2 ‘A clear lucid stream of everywhereness’ in Wild: A postmodern perspective3.3 Survivalist Culture in ‘Laughter Beneath the Bridge’3.4 The Poetic Muse of Archaeology PART IV: The wheel of transformation: The writer as lodestar (guide)4.1 Sublime transformative paremiology in A Way of Being Free 4.2 ‘The Standeruppers’: The frightening irony of the Anthropocene4.3 Conscious Reveries in The Magic Lamp: Dreams of Our Age 4.4 ‘The Incandescence of the Wind’: ‘Rain wisdom down upon this earth’PART V: In search of the marvellous: The sacred ziggurat (symbolic celestial mountain)5.1 Protean Magic in The Mystery Feast and The Magic Lamp5.2 An Interval in the Enchantment of Living: The Age of Magic 5.3 When chaos is the god of an era: Rediscovering an ‘axis mundi’ in Starbook 5.4 In conversation with Ben Okri BibliographyIndex

This inspired and thoughtful study of the work of the acclaimed novelist and poet Ben Okri emerges from deep reflection on the many different cultural, spiritual and philosophical traditions that weave together in his writing. Rosemary Gray's careful readings shed new and illuminating light on Okri's transformational aesthetic and intensely felt planetary concerns, as manifested in each one of his works. I have no doubt that The Tough Alchemy will remain the go-to study on Okri for many years to come.