Dangerous Love (novel)
1996 novel by Ben Okri
Dangerous Love is a 1996 novel by Nigeria-born British author Ben Okri set in Lagos of the 1970s. It is a remake of an earlier book, The Landscapes Within (1981). It is set in a post civil-war Nigerian society in a Lagos compound. Dangerous Love follows a young artist named Omovo and the influence that corrupt politics has on his artistry in the ghettos of Lagos in Nigeria after the Civil War.
The book is more conventional and realist than Okri's previous works, it also does not have as many literary critiques due to its experimental nature.
Dangerous Love is considered a Künstlerroman, or a coming of age story following an artist and is noted to be an unfinished Künstlerroman due to the unfinished artistic development of the character Omovo in the novel.
The Landscapes Within and Dangerous Love are continuations of the work of the Nigerian authors Amos Tutuola and the Ghanaian author Ayi Kwei Armah in the exploration of the meaning of beauty.
Plot
Book One
Dangerous Love starts with the main character Omovo whose disappointing new haircut leads him to shave his entire head. He has a supernatural vision and goes home to paint a tree with clouds surrounding it that are shaped like corpses. He feels detached from his home and life and he goes for a walk.
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The subject matters to the arts & letters register because the source frames it as 1996 novel by Ben Okri. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q18164630. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1996 and 1981.
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This entry incorporates text from “Dangerous Love (novel)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.