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Madame Sosostris and the Festival for the Brokenhearted

by Ben Okri (2025)

What do you do when your heart has been made a wasteland by love? Viv, who's in the House of Lords, had the idea for the festival on the twentieth anniversary of the day her first husband left her. Six months later, crowds descend on the grounds of a dreamlike chateau in the South of France, avidly awaiting the experience of a lifetime, Viv's inaugural Festival for the Broken-Hearted. Everyone is in fancy dress. No one knows who anyone is. They wander the beautiful woods with just one night to change everything. And to crown it all, a very special guest is expected: world-renowned clairvoyant and fortune-teller Madame Sosostris, known as the wisest woman in Europe, and not seen since the pages of T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land. She will attend for one night only. But will she actually appear at all, or will Viv's carefully orchestrated festival fall to pieces? Will Viv and her husband make it through the night? Will anyone else? Part vision, part mystery, this story of a midsummer night's madness is also an homage to Eliot's famous poem, in Ben Okri's inimitable style, as alive with echoes and reverberations as the enchanted forest itself. Think Ingmar Bergman meets William Shakespeare, with a dash of Mozart. Hearts will be healed, and hearts broken, but nobody will leave this festival exactly as they arrived.