The Age of Magic

February 12, 2024
Booker Prize winner Okri (The Famished Road) explores the relationship between storytelling and human experience in this quiet work of magical realism, originally published in 2002 as In Arcadia and inspired by Nicolas Poussin’s 1638 painting Et in Arcadia Ego. Colleagues Lao, Jim, Mistletoe, Propr, Jute, Riley, Husk, and Sam are filming a TV documentary about the mystical world of Arcadia, a legendary lost land reminiscent of Atlantis. The crew travels across Europe, from London to Paris and Switzerland, in search of Acadia: was it ever real or is it a product of overactive imaginations? Throughout the trip, a Quylph, a potentially malevolent supernatural being, follows them, reappearing in their dreams to coax them to find a hidden treasure. The introspective plot is largely character driven, digging into the filmmakers’ psyches and relationships with each other and keeping any sense of magic ephemeral and elusive. The results are slow, pensive, and dreamlike.

February 15, 2024
A fantasy written by Booker Prize-winner Okri. This most unusual journey of eight characters to "a mythic, a magical, state of being" called Arcadia is perhaps a novel, perhaps a poem; one might read it either way, the author suggests. It is a work of vivid imagination and language in which reality bends and blends with unreality. The plot is minimal, and the protagonists--mainly Lao and Mistletoe--face no antagonist. They are part of a documentary film crew, which gives them a reason for their train journey from Paris to Switzerland. Along the way, a Quylph (whatever that is) speaks to Lao in his sleep, asking what he is afraid of--Malasso, perhaps, as everyone else is? Malasso, he who has "featureless power and malignity" and a name that sounds like Badass, is a vague threat: Film crew director Jim must "transcend Faust, and solve the enigma of the Devil." The word Arcadia seems to carry special meaning: The first letter of the alphabet begins a journey, while the last takes you home. And "a" is also in the middle, so you can begin again. "Never move far from the alpha of life." Lao and Mistletoe engage in a highly poetic sex scene: "no longer of this world" and "low rhythmic wail"? Okay. But then, "Somewhere up in the mountains a stray rocket went off." What? With all the buildup, there should be an 8.3 magnitude earthquake. Anyway, expect plenty of white space--Chapter 1 is only one sentence, for example: "Some things only become clear much later." Such clarity will not illuminate every reader's mind, though. Some will reach the end of the book and think, Huh? Or worse, shrug. To quote Gertrude Stein about Oakland, there is no there there. Enjoyable for much of the prose, but not a strong story.

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