“And so time passed as he grew up in mystery . . . He became more silent, and yet more open. His utterances, though perfectly clear, were utterly opaque.” And no doubt his remarks were remarked on for their remarkability.

“He” is a slender prince in a west African kingdom a few hundred years ago, in the presumed golden age when sculpture flourished. Wandering through the forest, he sees a maiden by the river and falls in love. He hides in the bushes and calls out three questions to which she gives wise and humble answers. “Where does the river end?” “In the wisdom of God.” “Where does all our suffering end?” “In the happiness that lies beyond all things.” “And finally, what are we all seeking?” “The kingdom . . . which we are in already, which we have got, and which is our home.” Ben Okri informs us, “This is a story my mother began to tell me when I was a child . . .” We are not dealing with an unreliable narrator, then.

Instead of showing himself, the shy prince goes home. Later, he despairs because he can’t find the maiden again. We know, but for a long time he does not, that she belongs to a “tribe of artists”, whose village you can reach only by passing through a particular gap between two trees to enter their special dimension. The plot motor is thus one of the most reliable – deferred sex. The prince falls into a deathly swoon for love and multitudes gather at the palace to show their grief. This passage consciously echoes the scene at Kensington Palace in 1997 after Diana’s death, with people turning up because everyone else is going. But the prince gets better and resumes his quest.

The maiden’s father makes a prophetic sculpture of people in chains. Slavery is already practised among the tribes, but it looks as if things are about to take a drastic turn for the worse. It’s a question of whether prince and maiden can get it together before the evil “white spirits” come to take them away. The maiden, too, is expected to produce a prophetic work, but she just goes for walks. She declines to choose from among her various suitors. One villager tells another, “They say she broods, but does not breed.” Rhymes and half-rhymes often crop up, often painfully.

Does Okri get away with all this? Some readers will surely think so. The consistency of style and conviction is strong, Okri imposing his vision by force of will. He uses words such as “pure”, “clear”, “deep”, “true”, “noble” and “magical” on every page, inviting us to see these as qualities of the book itself. The recovered prince, “alive to the mystery of life”, says to his father, “Stories cannot be told of this.” The king replies, “They have tried, and found it better to speak indirectly about such matters, or be silent.” This seems to be Okri announcing that he can break such rules. As for the story’s naive aspect, he observes, “The works of the greatest masters must be able to speak to the smallest child, or the village idiot.” But when he tells how the maiden’s father wooed her mother by making a “sculpture out of pure air and sunlight, that all could see and not see”, we inevitably recall the emperor’s new clothes. My former tutor used to say of Wordsworth’s poetry, “He tells us this is all very deep and profound – ‘Deep deep,’ he goes, ‘profound profound’ – but is it?” Can’t think why that springs to mind.

STARBOOK: A Magical Tale of Love and Regeneration by Ben Okri
Rider £12.99 pp424
Buy the book here at the offer price of £11.69 (inc p&p)

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