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Rating: The pages of "The Dream Seller" have the exact same color as the African soil. They carry the scent of the sea, of the vast ocean that kisses that land. They are soaked with the deep blackness of Africa, with warmth and aridity, water and magic, boundless cities amidst the endless nothingness, interrupted only by small villages. But this book is not about small villages; it's about an endless city... Lagos, Nigeria.
Brief stories, threads that start from the reader and connect them to that land, to that place. Lagos, Nigeria. There is the less known Africa, the poor one, yes, but urban. What comes to mind when I say Africa? Safari, Sahara, sand, children, and poverty. But Africa is also cities, desperate and impoverished metropolises, distant (even while close) from the centers of power, from welfare.
Ben Okri describes his land, but especially its inhabitants, much more "Western" than we, Westerners, tend to assume. Yet they are unique Westerners, not forgetful of their roots, those that sink deep into that black African soil. They are people with many faces, as numerous as the situations they face, diverse facets of a world nevertheless far from ours, a society practically unknown. Ben Okri is the taxi driver who takes us for a ride through the streets of Lagos, talks to us about the people and their ways, tells us about the rituals that persist, the archaic arcane world, of modernization and the beliefs that remain, in the hearts and minds of people scorched by the yellow sun. A book focused on society, on people, a book that speaks of Africa without rhetoric, as only an African can.
While not a masterpiece, it deserves to be read, to tear away the veil of our ignorance towards a people, their history, and their present. Ben Okri is the taxi driver who takes us through the streets of Lagos, and he does so at a low price... hop on.
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