The Last Gift of the Master Artists

An epic, poetic story - enjoyable read

Poignant

Having enjoyed reading Ben Okri's The Famished Road, ages ago now, but then never going on to pick out any more of his books, I was excited to see his newest work, The Last Gift Of The Master Artists, offered for review on NetGalley. The concept of seeing a community living through their last weeks and months before the disaster of European slave trading took hold intrigued me as the vast majority of the African novels I have read have been set in the aftermath of the slave trade, in colonial times or later. In The Last Gift Of The Master Artists, signs of imminent destruction surround the Maiden's village and people have begun to vanish. We readers are all too aware what is going to happen, but the villagers struggle to make sense of the disappearances and rumours, the gruesome reality being so far removed from anything they had previously experienced that they cannot grasp it. The village, famed for its incredible artworks and artisans, uses its art as a form of prophecy, yet even the clearest sculptural depictions of the future are argued over and dismissed as fantasy.Okri mentions in an introduction that he sees in the climate crisis divisiveness a similar inability to face such a huge truth and there I appreciated several incisive paragraphs on this theme. Unfortunately though, The Last Gift Of The Master Artists wasn't the deeply rewarding read that I had hoped for. I found the novel to be much longer than I felt it needed to be and its slow pace dragged. Dozens of very short chapters, each one only a page or two, added to my impression of an overly long book. I also felt too removed from the central characters to become truly invested in their lives. I liked the artists' village which reminded me of Gormenghast and the Maiden's suitors were as humorously exasperating as those in The Penelopiad, but overall I was disappointed. I'm sure other readers will rave about The Last Gift Of The Master Artists but sadly it wasn't a good choice for me.