Ben Okri won the Booker Prize in 1991 for 'The Famished Road'. He was born in Nigeria, now lives in England, and has written 10 novels, two books of essays, and collections of poetry and short stories. He spent part of his childhood in England, and part in Nigeria, and his writing is influenced both by African storytelling traditions and myths, and by classical English and French writers like Shakespeare, Coleridge and de Montaigne.
His writing has always been hard to categorise, and this latest novel, the first I've read, is perhaps in the vein of Murakami, or Kundera. There are eight characters, film makers, on their way to Greece to make a film about the idea of Arcadia; they stop in a Swiss hotel by a lake to rest for a few days. The novel is in very short chapters, and is mostly philosophical discussions between various combinations of the characters. Some are profound meditations, some kind of miss their mark. It's a magical, mystical book, not a conventional novel by any means, but a very thought provoking one.