Ben Okri, Madame Sosostris & the Festival for the Broken Hearted

Part vision,  part mystery, this story of a midsummer night’s madness, in multi-award-winning poet, playwright and novelist Ben Okri’s inimitable style, is as alive with echoes and reverberations as the enchanted forest itself. Think Ingmar Bergman meets William Shakespeare, with a dash of Mozart.

This event will include an audience Q&A and after the event there will be an opportunity to get your book signed by the author.

‘Ben Okri is that rare thing, a literary and social visionary..’ – Ali Smith

Venue: Electric Palace, King’s Quay Street, Harwich, CO12 3ER
Tickets: £12 / £10 concessions (Students, Under 27s and Unwaged)
Box Office: essexbookfestival.org.uk or Mercury Theatre 01206 573948

Celebrating Collecting Dreams, Shifting Futures
Wednesday 28th May, Harwich

During the day on Wednesday 28 May, we will be hosting a series of workshops, walks and film-screenings in Harwich as part of the finale of our collaborative story-gathering project, Collecting Dreams, Shifting Futures. For more information about the activities taking place on this day visit essexbookfestival.org.uk/event/celebrating-collecting-dreams-shifting-futures/.

Madame Sosostris & the Festival for the Broken Hearted by Ben Okri

What do you do when your heart has been made a wasteland by love?

Viv, who’s in the House of Lords, had the idea for the festival on the twentieth anniversary of the day her first husband left her. Six months later, crowds descend on the grounds of a dreamlike chateau in the South of France, avidly awaiting the experience of a lifetime, Viv’s
inaugural Festival for the Broken-Hearted.

Everyone is in fancy dress. No one knows who anyone is. They wander the beautiful woods with just one night to change everything. And to crown it all, a very special guest is expected: world-renowned clairvoyant and fortune-teller Madame Sosostris, known as the wisest woman in Europe, and not seen since the pages of T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land. She will attend for one night only. But will she actually appear at all, or will Viv’s carefully orchestrated festival fall to pieces? Will Viv and her husband make it through the night? Will anyone else?

Part vision, part mystery, this story of a midsummer night’s madness is also an homage to Eliot’s famous poem, in Ben Okri’s inimitable style, as alive with echoes and reverberations as the enchanted forest itself. Think Ingmar Bergman meets William Shakespeare, with a dash of
Mozart.

Hearts will be healed, and hearts broken, but nobody will leave this festival exactly as they arrived.

“Heartbreak brings terrible self-confrontation. It shatters and exposes us and makes us naked to ourselves. It’s both existential and humbling. Heartbreak is as good a place as any to peek into the human condition. But this is a peek, not a prodding. The purpose of the novel is not to open wounds but to celebrate the transformations that come from surviving heartbreak. The hope is to delight and amuse.” – Sir Ben Okri

Order a copy of Madame Sosostris & the Festival for the Broken Hearted by Ben Okri at bookshop.org

Sir Ben Okri

Sir Ben Okri was born in Minna, Nigeria. His childhood was divided between Nigeria, where he saw first hand the consequences of war, and London. He has won many prizes over the years for his fiction, and is also an acclaimed essayist, playwright, and poet. In 2019 Astonishing the Gods was named as one of the BBC’s ‘100 Novels That Shaped Our World’.