English Summary/英文概要： In Ben Okri’s most significant novel since the Man Booker-winning The Famished Road, a young woman is arrested for speaking four simple words – Who is the Prisoner? This question resonates throughout the novel, and by the end it has become the question every reader has to ask themselves. The answer is implicit in the revelation at the heart of the story.

After her disappearance, a man begins to search for the woman, because he loves her. He searches desperately at first, and then with growing realization. And we journey with him as he searches, through a frightening, disintegrating world of lies, and violence, and fear. At the heart of this disturbing world lies the Prison.

To survive, and to answer the girl’s question, the young man, like all of us, has to accept the challenge and fight back.

The Freedom Artist is a penetrating examination of how freedom is threatened in a post-truth society. It’s a powerful call to arms.

Awards/获奖情况： ’Ben Okri’s most significant novel since his Man Booker Prize-winning masterpiece The Famished Road, The Freedom Artist weaves together ancient myth and modern politics for an impassioned story primed for the post-truth age. A story of love and loss, fiercely told and impossible to ignore’ Waterstones, ’The Best Books to Look Out For in 2019’.

His works have been translated into 27 languages and have won numerous international prizes including the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize for Africa, the Paris Review Aga Khan Prize for Fiction, the Chianti Ruffino-Antico Fattore International Literary Prize, and the Premio Grinzane Cavour Prize. His poem following the Grenfell Tower tragedy was widely viewed on television and on social media. He has been a Fellow Commoner in Creative Arts at Trinity College, Cambridge and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He was awarded an OBE in 2001.