Stars of the New Curfew by Ben Okri (Vintage, £6.99 in UK)

YOU have to keep pinching yourself to remind yourself that these stories are fictions, for the anger, despair, and sheer knee-buckling terror of post-civil war Nigeria is evident on every page. Okri's people are the little people of Lagos - the child who strays into the forest and witnesses a murder; the man whose only realistic source of income is the sale, drop by drop,l of his own blood; the seller of patent medicine who knows that the drugs he peddles are useless, if not dangerous - and his deadpan, child-like simplicity of tone illuminated by flashes of magic realism creates the perfect medium for the telling of terrible tales.