The book is written on behalf of the boy Azaro (diminutive of Lazarus), a “child-spirit” who remembers himself before his birth and lives not so much on the ground, in a poor village, in a family forced to earn money through the hardest work, among dirt and sweat and blood, how many ghosts, dead ancestors, souls of things and animals there are in the world. There is no clear plot, the narrative is continuous and looks like a dream - which, perhaps, is that space where the existing and imaginary realities are completely inseparable from each other.

Battles of the living and the dead, electricity like a miracle, rains washing away houses, the sun eating brains, conversations between herbs and birds, witches and werewolves as full members of society - African exoticism!

The novel won the Booker Prize in 1991. Perhaps the prize is, to some extent, a tribute to political correctness (the author is from Nigeria). But the book is excellent nonetheless.