Love :The Christian signature

wenty-five stories, twenty-five paintings, five years to write, ten years to paint. This is an extraordinary collaboration between artist and artist: the Booker Prize-winning writer Ben Okri and the painter Rosemary Clunie. Together they have created a world, and peopled it with dreams. Twenty-five fairy tales for adults, these narratives are a response to our times, informed by our world but not limited by it, imaginative, enchanting, haunting – both prescient and prophetic. Twenty-five original paintings, beautiful, playful, intimate, dreamlike, these works pull you in to a land of colour and vision. Who can say which came first, the word or image, when both grew together out of a long friendship and a creative symbiosis. What if Calvino and Magritte had combined inspiration? What if we could see our world again with a child’s eyes? What if there really is a magic lamp?

A prize-winning bestseller in its native France, a vivid and evocative coming-of-age tale, set against the backdrop of the Rwandan genocide and the civil war in Burundi, of a young boy’s childhood innocence shattered by the brutal tides of history. In 1992, Gabriel, ten years old, lives in Burundi in a comfortable expatriate neighborhood with his French father, his Rwandan mother and his little sister, Ana. In this joyful idyll, Gabriel spends the better part of his time with his mischievous band of friends, in a tiny cul-de-sac they have turned into their kingdom. But their peaceful existence will suddenly shatter when this small African country is brutally battered by history. In this magnificent coming-of-age story, Gael Faye describes an end of innocence and drives deep into the heart and mind of a young child caught in the maelstrom of history.

“The first writer of genius to come out of Africa” – B.B.C. “An account of Camara Laye’s boyhood experiences in an African tribe. It is remarkableeven a little astonishing -for its inside presentation of customs and formalities by a participant sensitive enough to feel and re-create their total impact. The African Child is memorable for the affection, honesty and intimacy that touch an African people into living warmth.” The Times “Camara Laye’s story is important for those who would understand a continent in turmoil. It is written in an austere, dignified prose charged with sincerity.’ The Listener “A beautiful book… James Kirkup’s translation could hardly be bettered. Camara Laye is an artist and has written a book which is a work of art.” Times Literary Supplement