Freedom Artist

In Ben Okri's most significant novel since the Man Booker-winning The Famished Road, a young woman is arrested for speaking four simple words – Who is the Prisoner? This question resonates throughout the novel, and by the end it has become the question every reader has to ask themselves. The answer is implicit in the revelation at the heart of the story. After her disappearance, a man begins to search for the woman, because he loves her. He searches desperately at first, and then with growing realization. And we journey with him as he searches, through a frightening, disintegrating world of lies, and violence, and fear. At the heart of this disturbing world lies the Prison. To survive, and to answer the girl's question, the young man, like all of us, has to accept the challenge and fight back. The Freedom Artist is a penetrating examination of how freedom is threatened in a post-truth society. It's a powerful call to arms.