The Famished Road is a novel by Nigerian author Ben Okri, the first book in a trilogy that continues with Songs of Enchantment (1993) and Infinite Riches (1998).

Published in London in 1991 by Jonathan Cape,[1] The Famished Road follows Azaro, an abiku, or spirit child, living in an unnamed African (most likely Nigerian) city.

[citation needed] The book exploits the belief in the coexistence of the spiritual and material worlds that is a defining aspect of traditional African life.

In a review of The Famished Road for The New York Times, Henry Louis Gates Jr. wrote: "It is the redoubtable accomplishment of this book (which won Britain's Booker Prize in 1991) to have forged a narrative that is both engagingly lyrical and intriguingly post-modern.

... Ben Okri, by plumbing the depths of Yoruba mythology, has created a political fable about the crisis of democracy in Africa and throughout the modern world.

More than that, however, he has ushered the African novel into its own post-modern era through a compelling extension of traditional oral forms that uncover the future in the past.