Okri has spoken of writing the novel during the time from 1988, when he lived in a Notting Hill flat that he rented from publisher friend Margaret Busby:[4][5] "I brought the first draft of The Famished Road with me and that flat was where I began rewriting it.... Something about my writing changed round about that time. I acquired a kind of tranquillity. I had been striving for something in my tone of voice as a writer—it was there that it finally came together.... That flat is also where I wrote the short stories that became Stars of the New Curfew."[6]
In the introduction to the 25th-anniversary edition of The Famished Road, Okri said: "The novel was written to give myself reasons to live. Often the wonder of living fades from us, obscured by a thousand things. I wanted to look at life afresh and anew and I sought a story that would give me the right vantage point. It is also meant to be a humorous book–from the perspective of the spirits, the deeds and furies of men are tinged with absurdity. Poverty compelled me to break off writing the novel in order to shape another, different book which would help keep me alive. This was a book of short stories and it forced compression on me."[7]
