If we except the first story, "In the Shadow of War", which seemed slight and unworthy of the rest, STARS OF THE NEW CURFEW contains five topnotch stories by Nigerian author Ben Okri. To use a `national' adjective like that is sometimes to say everything and sometimes to say nothing. In this case, it is obvious that though you can take Okri out of Nigeria (he lives in London), you cannot take Nigeria out of Okri. The gritty, sweaty, illogical desperation of his characters, hanging on to life by hook or by crook in the slums of Lagos or provincial towns, is so vivid that so-called "magical realism" seems more like "realism". The smell of sewerage and dried fish, the clash of traffic, drums and trumpets, the spieling of patent medicine salesmen, the dust, the heaps of garbage, the roar of military trucks and aircraft drown out your disbelief. Okri is the Tutuola of the modern age, a more controlled, a more polished Yoruba tale spinner with none of the hopes of the more-placid colonial era when independence was only a goal. Published after 28 years of freedom, these stories reflect the chaos, the corruption, the lost chances and the waste of human abilities and natural resources. Maybe they are just stories, maybe they are a protest from the soul---what has happened to our Nigeria ? The military governor's birthday where one of the crazily zooming planes celebrating the occasion crashes into a slum----the competition of two wealthy families in a small town which takes the form of a money-throwing contest in which poor and unlucky fellow citizens abase themselves by fighting over notes and coins---the irony of a bewildered Rastafarian from the long-vanished diaspora, returned to preach and cry out "Africa, we counting on yuh !" in the streets of chaos and ruin. People live on their wits, people live at the expense of others' health and earnings, violence rules, the beautiful girl will die, life is cheap, yet dearly held for all that. The last story, "What the Tapster Saw", ripped from the same cloth as Tutuola's "The Palm-wine Drinkard", is a tale as told by the traditionally powerless to deliver subtle messages about affairs in the real world without pointing any fingers. It can be a message for Nigeria, it can be just the fantastic wanderings of a storyteller's fevered brain. These are wonderful stories, Okri is a worthy addition to the pantheon of Nigerian literature. "There are several ways to burn in your own fire."(p.191) Here they are.