“Prayer for the Living" by Ben Okri

An audio book (though I think I needed a printed version).

• Boko Haram (1) - a child has explosives wrapped around him, and is told go to a crowded market.
• Prayer for the Living - “All the faces are familiar. Death has made them all my kin.” "the desert stretched all the way to the past"
• An Inca Elegy - a tour guide (ex soldier) sees a young girl living in the ruins. All the men of the village have gone to the city. She wants a child. The guide offers but she says she must keep the bloodline pure.
• A Sinister Perfection - A girl wants a Doll's house. Her father orders a perfect imitation of their house. A stranger visits. There's a fire. The Doll's house survives, as does the stranger's blue stone.
• Ancient Ties of Karma - duelers cross landscapes. Finally, by a cemetary, "something bizarre happened. Events in the real world caught up with the truths of the shadow world"
• Dreaming of Byzantium - a man who wants to go to Byzantium finds himself there beside a woman in a hotel. He does a very standard tourist tour. The woman says she's the dream he had before dreaming of Byzantium. Things become dreams. Dreams become things.
• The Canopy - a hotel restaurant
• In the Ghetto - the car of a man plus sons breaks down near home, in a ghetto. They need help to push it.
• Hail - a framer says that he's depressed after framing 500 paintings. He seems happier after framing a worthless photo for his girlfriend
• Mysteries - "something unfathomable about the dark light in his eyes"
• Tulips - a man goes to an event. When asked about it later, everything - the soup, etc - is tulips.
• The Lie - a sultan send people out to find the greatest lie. They return years later with answers like "life after death". The magician, who hasn't aged at all, decides to give up magic. When the sultan dies, an angel decides to make use of his findings.
• Boko Haram (2) - poorly armed soldiers go in the woods
• The Master's Mirror - a man is invited a join a secret brotherhood. The mirror is dangerous to look in.
• The Standeruppers - evolution in a cave. The creatures who stand up make hunting easier. I don't get it.
• Alternative Realities are True - a crime doesn't happen until the body is observed, so the detective makes the public gather to watch a river being searched.
• The Story in the Next Room - a man goes next door to get a young girl to tell a story. He's being watched by colleagues. She takes her top off and asks him to tell a story. He starts as she puts her top back on. I don't get it.
• The Overtaker - Dad's been driving kids through the night. They stop at an accident. A man (a ghost?) warns one of the sons about the dangerous road, its hunger for death
• Raft - a raft on the way to Greece begins to sink. I don't get it.
• The Secret History of a Door - a prison door has the power to detect whether people or good or bad. When poets see it they give up or go into advertising.
• The Offering - a woman with a guitar goes to the montains. She told about a secret lake high up, "a lake that only time had breathed on ... not a legend but the source of all legends". When she tries to dive in, the lake disappears and she talks to the woman of the water.
• Don Ki-Otah and the Ambiguity of Reading - Don Quixote goes to a printer and asks to see "the machine that multiplies realities". He says that if you read a book differently, it's a different book. He says that everything is reading.
• Boko Haram (3) - a decapitation.
• A Street - streets affect people. One street made a poet rewrite his saga as a haiku. The same street made another poet rewrite his haiku as a saga.

Lots about dream/reality interaction. I liked "Dreaming of Byzantium". I didn't get the point of many of the shorter pieces - poetic phrases here and there; the odd interesting folk-tale idea.

Other reviews

• Babi Oloko (Reading Prayer for the Living was a corporal experience for me, the likes of which I have not had since I was a child reading fantasy books with mystical worlds. My heart sped up, my stomach dropped, I gasped, I laughed, I closed the book and gazed out the window for a few minutes then came back and opened the book again.)
• Maya C. James (“Dreaming of Byzantium” is a story where Okri’s greatest strengths are evident. In it, a man tries to reach the city of Byzantium through a myriad of practical and mystical ways. His frustration plays out through mapmaking, failed attempts to commute to the city, and waiting for an answer in a cafe. For a while, that is all his life is – an intense longing for a place that the fates seemingly keep locked away, and the weight and allure of unattainable dreams.)
• Kirkus reviews