Listen free for 30 days

Listen with offer

Preview
  • The Freedom Artist

  • By: Ben Okri
  • Narrated by: Ben Okri
  • Length: 6 hrs and 56 mins
  • 4.2 out of 5 stars (18 ratings)

£0.00 for first 30 days

Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

The Freedom Artist

By: Ben Okri
Narrated by: Ben Okri
Try for £0.00

£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £12.99

Buy Now for £12.99

Pay using card ending in
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.

Summary

Bloomsbury presents The Freedom Artist written and read by Ben Okri.

'Where fiction's master of enchantments stares down a real horror, and without blinking or flinching, produces a work of beauty, grace and uncommon power' MARLON JAMES, winner of the Man Booker Prize 2015.

An impassioned plea for freedom and justice, set in a world uncomfortably like our own, by the Man Booker-winner Ben Okri.

In a world uncomfortably like our own, a young woman called Amalantis is arrested for asking a question. Her question is this: Who is the Prisoner?

When Amalantis disappears, her lover Karnak goes looking for her. He searches desperately at first, then with a growing realization. To find Amalantis, he must first understand the meaning of her question.

Karnak's search leads him into a terrifying world of lies, oppression and fear at the heart of which lies the Prison. Then Karnak discovers that he is not the only one looking for the truth.

The Freedom Artist is an impassioned plea for justice and a penetrating examination of how freedom is threatened in a post-truth society. In Ben Okri's most significant novel since the Booker Prize-winning The Famished Road, he delivers a powerful and haunting call to arms.

'Ben Okri is that rare thing, a literary and social visionary, a writer for whom all three – literature, culture and vision – are profoundly interwoven' ALI SMITH.

©2019 Ben Okri (P)2019 Head of Zeus
activate_Holiday_promo_in_buybox_DT_T2

Listeners also enjoyed...

Prayer for the Living cover art
At Certain Points We Touch cover art
Descent into Hell cover art
The Famished Road cover art
Weird Tales Magazine No. 367 cover art
Temptation and Denial cover art
The Damned & Other Stories of the Macabre cover art
Of One Blood; or The Hidden Self (AmazonClassics Edition) cover art
The Greater Trumps cover art
The Door in the Wall [Classic Tales Edition] cover art
The Place of the Lion cover art
Unexhausted Time cover art
Jack Picklewick and the Hands of Time cover art
HorrorBabble's Vampires cover art
Once a Monster cover art
The Three Impostors and Other Weird Tales cover art

Critic reviews

"Okri is incapable of writing a boring sentence. As one startling image follows the next, The Famished Road begins to read like an epic poem that happens to touch down just this side of prose... When I finished the book and went outside, it was as if all the trees of South London had angels sitting in them." (Linda Grant, Independent on Sunday)

"A magical book in every sense, a spellbinding, poetic, artistic journey into our collective imaginations and inner selves." (Will Gompertz, BBC Arts Editor)

What listeners say about The Freedom Artist

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    11
  • 4 Stars
    3
  • 3 Stars
    1
  • 2 Stars
    2
  • 1 Stars
    1
Performance
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    12
  • 4 Stars
    2
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    1
  • 1 Stars
    1
Story
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    10
  • 4 Stars
    1
  • 3 Stars
    2
  • 2 Stars
    2
  • 1 Stars
    1

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

The Shaman Speaks

Utterly mesmerising performance by the author. It is the first time that I have listened to Ben Okri. Poetic, beautiful, I could listen to it over and over again. Pure Genius! I would have given it ten stars if I could.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    2 out of 5 stars

Too metaphorical

I really enjoyed ‘On being Free’, but did not like this book as much. I get the premise of questioning societal constraints, but the whole fiction built upon this premise I found a bit wishy washy and contrived. Ben Okri narrates eloquently however.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    2 out of 5 stars

The story never got started

I felt like the whole time I was waiting for the story to start. When it finally did, the story ended. I felt like it was trying too hard to be philosophical and failed with the storyline

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful