This is a wide-ranging collection of Nigerian Booker Prize winner Ben Okri’s writing on the climate crisis. This ranges from poetry, serious articles, short stories in various styles, including dystopian, sci-fi and fantastical. The titular poem reminds us that the loss of any species is as terrible as the loss of something popular and obvious like a tiger. We need to find our tiger spirit. I enjoyed the stories most, and I think Okri’s best and most vivid work is when he’s writing about Nigeria. I wasn’t a fan of the poetry, but then I read the lines “Outsider foxes and/Sarcastic wolves” and various other wonderful phrases. I’d say there’s something for everyone here. It’s articulate and thought-provoking, with his trademark magical realism and a varied cast of animals, river goddesses, aliens and even everyday people.

The message is clear: we’re ruining our world and we need to show our love for it, not only by protecting the environment in our daily lives, but by taking action and demonstrating against governments and businesses that are destroying the world.

Disclaimer: Thank you to the publisher for sending me a digital ARC. This is my somewhat belated and unbiased personal review.

I really enjoyed this book! I will have to buy it to keep in my library - am a huge Ben Okri fan! I will also be recommending to other MA students I study with

Tiger Work is a collection of timely and often poignant short stories, essays and poetry about Climate Change by Nigerian-born Booker Prize-winner Ben Okri that constitute a powerful and very personal appeal for change. He offers what he feels are the reasons that too little is being done, and makes positive suggestions.

He states: “Our capacity for denial is stronger than our capacity for belief. We find it easier to not face the truth. We go on living our ordinary lives while refusing to believe the overwhelming evidence that our way of life is destroying us. A prisoner of the past, we go on doing things which we know are killing us. Worse, we believe that the inevitable conclusion of all our deeds will not come to pass. We think that somehow, at the last minute, there will be a miracle, a magical solution. We possibly even hope that factors in nature we hadn’t considered will somehow wipe clean the slate of our environmental crimes.”

One of the short stories, “And Peace Shall Return” is a post-apocalyptic tale that consists of scraps of documents found by those visiting Earth some twenty thousand years after the planet went silent: “scattered notes and half-worked stories left behind by the last human beings in the very twilight of their history.”, offering a retrospective of earths fate. It includes “The real menace were the politicians smoothly denying there was anything to fear. But we were the worst menace of all. The way we kept trying to live normally” which may resonate with many.
Another, “After the End” offers a view of what seems like a pre apocalyptic dystopia.
The poetry is persuasive and thought-provoking:
“What can one say to those
Who either don’t want to
Hear, or have heard enough?
What can one say
That doesn’t paralyse some
With the sheer scale
Of the problem?
Fear Doesn’t work.
And guilt doesn’t work.
So I thought that maybe
Love could shift our vision”
And
“In the Tao Te Ching
There’s a light-crammed
Passage which says
That the sage loves
The world as they love their body.
If the earth were our body
Would we do half the things
To it that we’re doing?
Take a nuclear blast
To the kidney
Smash the heart
With metal spikes
Frack the intestines
Mine the brain“ are examples

Okri prefaces it all with the request to “read slowly”, and these analytical and inspirational pieces will definitely have their best impact if consumed in small doses. The reader’s frame is mind will also be important to how well the message is received. Will his message reach those who need to hear it? Or is Okri preaching to the converted? Topical and relevant.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Head of Zeus

Ben Okri is one of my favourite authors. Therefore, I was excited to see that he had released a new book. I was not disappointed.

Okri uses fiction, poetry and non-fiction to explore the issues around global warming and environmental justice, ending with a call for new stories that report on, and fight, global warming.

The book is full of Okri's lyrical writing and magical stories. I highly recommend this book.

This short book contains poems, short stories, an essay, all with the theme of climate change, environmental disaster and the nature of humans. Some of the pieces are post disaster, some are mid disaster, much of them questioning how humans can be the cause and yet not see it. I think my favourite piece was towards the start of the book.[ A young woman is giving a talk at a university. She has a bowl of water and an empty glass. She asks if everyone can see her. Then she pours the water into the glass and lets it overflow until there’s quite a flood. The audience asks her to stop, what are you doing etc. She replies ‘What flooding?’ and leaves.

Ben Okri’s new publication "Tiger Work" straddles both fiction and nonfiction and primarily focuses on the environment and climate change, which is what first interested me in the work.

This is my first experience reading a text by Ben Okri, although I have wanted to read "The Famished Road" for many years now and haven’t gotten around to it. After reading this collection though, I’m going to make reading "The Famished Road" a priority because Okri’s writing is fantastic! It's the type of writing to immerse yourself and get lost in!

I’m not a big fan of contemporary/Postmodern poetry, but the poems in the collection, such as those in “The Broken”, including one with the same refrain present in the last poem of the collection titled “Anthem”, are beautiful and moving. Okri’s poems don’t include a lot of poetic devices, so if you’re not a fan of Modernist poetry (or poetry published prior to 1945) or don't enjoy reading poetry that tends to include poetic devices, then the poetry might appeal to you.

I feel that the longer works, such as “Three Parables” (a triptych), “The Last Solitude”, “And the Gods Departed”, “The House Below”, “The Songbird’s Silence”, “Letter to the Earth”, “Existential Creativity”, and “The Secret Source” were more enjoyable to read, and I appreciated the questions that were posed in those works in addition to the assertions that he makes…Even though those assertions feel more like accusations—and rightly so.

Okri’s work in this collection shifts the question of, “Is global warming real?” to: “When is the world going to end?” because I got the sense while reading Okri’s work that the characters and conversations led to only one outcome: the pending devastation and end of the world, and that perhaps that’s not the worst outcome. I’m not going to lie, I don’t disagree. As the world continues to warm up (I swear I just saw some headline in the news about a climatologist saying either that we’re precariously close to the temperature rising to 1.5 degrees warmer or we have already pushed ourselves over that 1.5 degree…Lovely.), Okri’s work couldn’t be timelier. I feel that this is a work that everyone needs to read because I’m convinced that humans need to face up to the terrible truth—including myself. We have only ourselves to blame for killing the only place we have to live, and no one is blameless.

So as I sit and continue to ruminate on this collection, I know I’m going to carry Okri’s words with me for a very long time—and I hope I do. Because to read Okri’s collection quickly, to disregard it as just another environmental manifesto, and to ignore yet another prophetic warning would be doing a great disservice to nature, wildlife, and to our fellow humans, and Okri knows we’re already heading towards disaster. In spite of where we’re taking ourselves, the tone in this collection is (at times) hopeful and powerful. It’s making me reconsider how I live my life. I’ve already given up my vehicle…Now how else may I contribute to an effort to save what we have for the next generation to come?

Many, many thanks to both NetGalley and Head of Zeus (Apollo) for allowing me to read an ARC of Ben Okri’s newest publication "Tiger Work" in exchange for an honest review.

Lest we perish, lest we lose our only home

Ben Okri, poet, novelist essayist and more, has written an excoriating, impassioned, call to arm our hearts, bodies and souls.

As he repeatedly reminds us, most of us have always had our heads in the sands, ostrich like, in denial, for aeons and generations, in our appreciation and gratitude for this home of ours. Gaia, Mother Earth, all our sisters and brothers who are her children, whom she has nurtured and supported. Our sisters and brothers are not only each human other, but the plants and animals who live on, in, and above her. And even that earth itself, and those ocean beds, the very rocks which are also formed from the matter of organisms that arose time immemorial before us.

Choosing not to see that even taking no active position in the greed, the always dsire for more, and the tendency to ‘other’ every thing, place and person that is not me and mine, may no longer be enough.

Through parable, through story, through the clarion call of poetry, Okri reminds us we must all become warriors, tigers of the heart, in enough love for our earth to protect her, as actively, and tenderly as a tiger does her cubs. We must truly and actively love her, be her lover, be her warrior,

This is a deeply uncomfortable read, in many ways, a kind of ‘J’accuse’ to each and every one of us.

Okri has taken up his arms here, not with a stream of unavoidable data about climate change, global warming, weather disasters, details of lives lost in a stream of ‘unprecented’ extreme weather events. We often glaze over the visceral understanding of such facts. As an artist of language, Okri knows that heart and gut must be engaged, for true involvement.

Time and again, we are reminded that the other we need to love ‘as ourselves’ is all of it. You, me, and all that dances, creeps, crawls, swims, flies, roots and shoots on, in, under and above the extraordinary planet of ours.

We have spent too long looking this gift horse in the mouth, rather than filled with awe and gratitude for this treasure

‘Read slowly’ Okri asks us. If we do, the magnificent riches in the short concentrated book will rightly overwhelm us, giving endless pause for deep thought.

“Can you hear the future weeping?”

This book is a beautiful, yet absolutely terrifying collection of poems, prose and essays about climate changes, and while it is destined to cause some discussion and debate, it might not be able to safe the planet, but I do believe that we would have a lot bigger chance of doing so if every single human read this book.

It might me cry on more than one occasion. It made me think and reflect upon my own life, the world we live in, and most importantly, it made me want to do better.

I read this collection quickly, turning page after page, because I simply could not stop once I started - even though every single page broke my heart - but at the very beginning of the book the author actually requests that you read it slowly, and I would recommend doing that (if you can put it away) to really take in the message of each text. I, personally, will definitely be re-reading (perhaps even more than once) and this time a little slower, as it was first intended. After all, this is a book with a message so powerful that it doesn’t hurt to have it repeated.

Everyone should read this book. It gets the message of the threat of climate change across in such a clear way through poetry and prose. It is so easy for us each to gloss over the impact our individual actions can have on this fragile environment and you can sense the author's frustration as we bury our heads in the sand. It is a captivating but disturbing read that we should all take note of if we're serious about protecting our planet.

At first, I had no clue what my relationship with this book would be, but I loved it. Not only is the writing beautiful, but it has a powerful message with a significant perspective. Overall, an incredible book that was way more unique than I thought it would be. I will probably think about it for a while.

Well here was something different. Ben Okri has returned with a new work, a collection of pieces centred around one central theme: climate change. There are short stories, poems, interviews, essays.

Right at the start Okri recommends we "read slowly." I took this work one piece at a time, spending time afterwards to ruminate on the message behind the text. Okri is not didactic here, does not labour his point, but simply shows things as they are, as he sees them, and offers thoughts for the future. This alone makes it an essential work.

It is not a work all will agree with. Climate change is a provocative subject. It is hard, however, to disagree with the central message: that unless we care for what we have now, we will lose it forever.

Not every piece here worked as well as the other, but every one of them had something to take away from them, everyone of them had a moment of beauty. It is a slim volume but it contains multitudes.

Thank you to the publishers and Netgalley for the ARC.

A powerful collection of essays, stories, poetry and more. On their own, they are impactful but together it is really strong. Clear messaging, thought provoking and definitely one that will leave you thinking.

Ben Okris Tiger work is a book that offers a lot: poems, prose stories, essays. The texts are linked by the topic of climate change.

It begins with three parabolas about water. Then a multi-part poem The Broken
Stories follow.

The eponymous poem, which is one of the highlights of the book, is central.

This also applies to the parable-like story The House below.

With The songbirds silence there is even a story for children.
There is also a short interview.

Also worth mentioning is the 11-chapter dystopian tale After the end. There is still a lot to come before the book closes with Anthem.

It is a book that contains many remarkable texts and does not leave the reader indifferent.