Unravelling the Post-Modern Narrative through the works of Ben Okri

Abstract

The unique style of developing the narrative is considered as one of the tenets used by post-modern writers in their works. Time and space are the two constructs present in any post-modern narrative that function diversely for different authors from different locales. Ben Okri, a prominent Nigerian postcolonial, postmodern novelist draws different mythical beliefs and rituals of his society around the real and spirit world by portraying ‘Forest’ as a post-modern space that marks the dominance of urban and colonial culture in his Booker Prize-winning novel The Famished Road. Similarly, Astonishing the Gods by Okri transports the reader to the journey of being ‘Visible’ with the passages of time expressed through the narrative. Patrick Bray in his article “Creating a Space for Time” talks about the maps that can be structured to situate the narrator within the imaginary figures and characters that are inherent in the narrative of the text. The present paper tries to look at the constructs used by Ben Okri to re-create the postmodern narrative in his selected works that are revealed through time and space.