Books that made me / Ben Okri / ‘I began Don Quixote as one person and finished as another’

Katy Mart 22, 2022

‘I always finish books I begin. Better not to start than not to finish’ … Ben Okri. Photograph: Martin Godwin

Books

that

made me

Ben Okri: ‘I began Don Quixote as one person and finished as another’

The author on his mother’s storytelling, cheering up with Oscar Wilde and why he always finishes books

Friday 8 March 2019

The book I am currently reading
The third volume of John Richardson’s A Life of Picasso. It reveals him to be at once worldly and lordly, both a deliberate artist and an intuitive one. The best biographies don’t read the life into the work, but acknowledge their parallel and sometimes contingent realities.

The book that changed my life
Cervantes’ Don Quixote. I first read it in my mid-20s, on the underground while commuting to Bush House where I worked as a World Service presenter. I began that book as one person and finished it as another. It seemed to contain not only the history of the novel , but also to hint at the many futures of the novel.

The book I wish I’d written
Homer’s The Odyssey. This is the work I always go back to, an immortal tale of the cosmic difficulties of the return. More than a book, it is a civilisation, and yet it is an intimate story of a man, a family, an adventure.

The greatest influence on my writing
My mother’s enigmatic way of telling stories. They appeared to have no point but they haunted me with their suggestiveness, and they were so fascinating that 40 years later I still contemplate their elusive meanings.

The book that is most underrated
Alexander Pushkin’s The Captain’s Daughter. James Joyce dismissed it as a book for boys, but it is a cunningly crafted novel that manages to be quietly revolutionary and give a full picture of Russian life and pave the way for the Russian thunderers to come, Tolstoy, Turgenev, Dostoyevsky. Out of this little book came a forest.

The book that changed my mindPedro Paramo, by Juan Rulfo. Didn’t think too much of it when I read it 15 years ago, but I re-read it recently twice in a row. A mysterious and compressed book.

The last book that made me cry
André Le Vot’s biography of F Scott Fitzgerald reveals the deep pathos and the formidable weight of thought behind what appeared to be a pleasure-loving, talent-squandering life.

The last book that made me laugh
Albert Camus’s The Outsider, which I adapted as a play for the Coronet theatre. Absurd humour is akin to the humour of Greek tragedy, mixing the intolerable perception with the unavoidable truth of life.

The book I couldn’t finishI always finish books I begin. Better not to start than not to finish. This is true of reading as well as writing.

The book I’m most ashamed not to have read
Sinclair Lewis’s Main Street. Such a seminal text of American naturalism, giving its name to an economic inclination, and I haven’t read it.

My earliest reading memory
Being hustled out of the living room because I was reading my father’s copy of the Times when I was about four years old.

My comfort read
There are few plays that one can read for the sheer pleasure they give, their unfailing humour, the abiding delight. When the world feels grim and one needs cheering up, Oscar Wilde’s plays are witty enliveners of the spirit.

The book I most often give as a gift
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. It is one of those books by which friendships are determined.

• The Freedom Artist by Ben Okri is published by Head of Zeus.

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