In this week's edition of Endnotes, we take a look at Ben Okri's Madame Sosostris and the Festival for the Brokenhearted, a story of a masked ball in present-day France, drawing on A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In its review, PW says "Shakespeare lovers should flock to this."
Here's how the book came together:
Ben Okri
“The novel took longer to write than it looks. There were many drafts. I always move toward greater clarity and ambiguity at the same time. I want the writing to be both lean and poetic. The main challenge of the writing was a certain brevity and swiftness, the combination of comedy and profundity, lightness of touch. In a way, I wanted to be a new Ben Okri.”
Georgina Capel
“I was already Ben’s agent when he sent me Madame Sosostris and the Festival for the Brokenhearted, and I fell in love with the book immediately. I read the novel overnight and immediately sent it to Judith and to Ben’s editor in London, Maggie McKernan, and knew they would both fall in love with the novel, too.”
Judith Gurewich
“Working with Ben on Madame Sosostris was a completely new experience for me. Rather than making sure his profound and original understanding of human nature was as clear and vibrant as possible, I found that working with him on this novel was radically different from working on his previous books. Ben and I were in a duel. So we pulled out our swords and went at each other.”
Jesi Kelley
“Mr. Okri wanted to use the painting Carnival Evening by Henri Rousseau. It really went well with the premise of the book, so the bulk of the work for me was figuring out how to place the image so that key elements—the beautiful moon, those little clouds, and the figures in the foreground—would work in the space.”
