by Ben Okri
Recommended by Richard Branson
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Reading A Time for New Dreams feels like moving through a small library of linked, lyrical essays that alternate between childhood memory, questions of self-censorship, and ruminations on beauty and education. Where it helps most: brief, evocative passages that linger and suggest rather than argue. Limitation: the conversational-poetic tone sometimes sacrifices clear, sustained analysis, so readers wanting systematic argument or practical takeaways will find recurring images and asides frustrating. Best read slowly, savoring individual essays rather than trying to extract a single thesis.
This summary and audience guidance are AI-generated from the book's description and its recommendation history, last updated June 2026. Recommendations, quotes and sources elsewhere on this page come from published material and are not generated.
Bookerwinning novelist and one of Britain's foremost poets, Ben Okri is a passionate advocate of the written word. In A Time for New Dreams he breaks new ground in an unusual collection of linked essays, which address such diverse themes as childhood, selfcensorship, the role of beauty, the importance of education and the real significance of the...
Difficulty:hard
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Recommended by 2 sources and appears in Most Recommended Books and Nonfiction.
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Consider The Essential Rumi by Jalal AlDin Rumi. Recommended by 8 sources.
“This revised and expanded collection gathers dozens of short, intensely lyrical poems that rely on ecstatic spiritual imagery and intimate metaphors. Many pieces are brief and self-contained, suited to reading aloud or dipping into between tasks, and the added previously unpublished poems widen the emotional range. What works best is a steady stream of memorable lines that resurface on rereading; the main limitation is repetition — shared images and refrains recur, and translation choices sometimes smooth or sentimentalize cultural particularities.”
Each recommendation is collected from a public source — interviews, articles, or curated lists — and linked to its original URL. Books with many verifiable recommendations from respected people rank higher.
