Ben Okri in conversation with Toef Jaeger

Ben Okri is a Nigerian-born poet and cultural activist. He is the author of thirteen novels, including The Famished Road, which won the Booker Prize and forms the first part of a trilogy. His novel Astonishing the Gods was selected for the BBC’s list of ‘100 novels that shaped our world’. He has also published collections of poetry, short stories, plays and essays.

His work has been translated into more than 27 languages. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and has won numerous international prizes. His poem following the Grenfell Tower tragedy was widely viewed on television and on social media. He was a Fellow Commoner in Creative Arts at Trinity College, Cambridge. He was awarded an OBE in 2001 and a Knighthood in 2023.

At Crossing Border he will talk about his latest novel Madam Sosostris & the Festival for the Broken-Hearted.|

About Madam Sosostris & the Festival for the Broken-Hearted

There are organizations for people who grieve, for alcoholics and other kinds of addicts. But if you’ve been devastated by the love of your life walking out on you, where the hell do you go?

On the 20th anniversary of the day her first husband left her, Viv decides to host an unconventional party for those burned by love. She successfully ropes in her reluctant second husband, Alan, and their friends Beatrice and Stephen. When she meets the famed fortuneteller Madame Sosostris, last seen in T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, and rumored to be the secret to success of 5 prime ministers. She believes she’s found the perfect act to headline her masquerade.

In a sacred wood in the south of France, the partygoers disguise themselves and wait eagerly for the great clairvoyant, who might be able to mend their broken pasts and brighten their futures. But the night soon goes awry, in a comically revealing way that causes our couples to question their relationships and the direction of their lives.