Ben Okri joins us live from the Sydney Writers Festival to read from and talk about his latest novel The Age of Magic and what inspired it, its characters, on the true nature of magic, on the book’s themes incuding what Goethe calls des Pudels Kern (the real nature or deeper meaning of things), on transcendent knowledge and why we truly are living in an age of magic, on the value of slow reading, why we need new forms of fiction, his new poetry book Wild, on the relationship between writing poetry and writing prose, upcoming work, and lots more. Note: this interview took place following Ben’s Age of Magic Talk which I referred to several times in my interview. The talk can be listened to in full here: http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/booksandarts/sydney-writers27-festival3a-ben-okri/6488934