Ben Okri

Biography

Early years and education

Ben Okri is a member of the Urhobo people; his father was Urhobo, and his mother was half-Igbo ("from a royal family"). He was born in Minna in west central Nigeria to Grace and Silver Okri in 1959. Okri thus spent his earliest years in London and attended primary school in Peckham. where he practised law in Lagos, providing free or discounted services for those who could not afford it. in 1968, when he was the youngest in his class. His exposure to the Nigerian Civil War and a culture in which his peers at the time claimed to have had visions of spirits provided inspiration for Okri's fiction.

At the age of 14, after being rejected for admission to a short university programme in physics because of his youth and lack of qualifications, Okri experienced a revelation that poetry was his chosen calling. He began writing articles on social and political issues, but these never found a publisher. He then wrote short stories based on those articles, and some were published in women's journals and evening papers. Okri has said that his criticism of the government in some of this early work led to his name being placed on a death list, and necessitated his departure from the country.

Move to England, 1978

In 1978, he moved back to England and studied comparative literature at Essex University with a grant from the Nigerian government. But when funding for his scholarship fell through, Okri found himself homeless, sometimes living in parks and sometimes with friends. He has called this period "very, very important" to his work: "I wrote and wrote in that period... If anything [the desire to write] actually intensified."

Okri's success as a writer began when he published his debut novel, Flowers and Shadows, in 1980, at the age of 21. From 1983 to 1986, he served as poetry editor of West Africa magazine, and he regularly contributed to the BBC World Service between 1983 and 1985, continuing to publish throughout this period.

His reputation as an author was secured when his novel The Famished Road won the Booker Prize for Fiction in 1991, making him the prize's youngest ever winner at 32. The novel was written during the time from 1988 that Okri lived in a Notting Hill flat that he rented from publisher friend Margaret Busby, and he has said: :"Something about my writing changed round about that time. I acquired a kind of tranquillity. I had been striving for something in my tone of voice as a writer—it was there that it finally came together.... That flat is also where I wrote the short stories that became [1988's] Stars of the New Curfew."

In 1997, Okri was elected vice-president of the English Centre for International PEN and in 1999 was appointed a member of the board of the Royal National Theatre.

On 26 April 2012, he was appointed vice-president of the Caine Prize for African Writing, having been on the advisory committee and associated with the prize since it was established 13 years earlier.

Okri was appointed as a vice-president of the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in 2022.

Literary career

Since the 1980 publication of Flowers and Shadows, Okri has risen to international acclaim, and he often is described as one of Africa's leading writers.

His best known work, The Famished Road, which won the 1991 Booker Prize, along with Songs of Enchantment (1993) and Infinite Riches (1998) make up a trilogy that follows Azaro, a spirit-child narrator, through the social and political turmoil of an African nation reminiscent of Okri's remembrance of war-torn Nigeria.

Okri's work is particularly difficult to categorise. It has been widely called postmodern, but some scholars have noted that the seeming realism with which he depicts the spirit-world challenges this categorisation. If Okri does attribute reality to a spiritual world, it is claimed, then his "allegiances are not postmodern [because] he still believes that there is something ahistorical or transcendental conferring legitimacy on some, and not other, truth-claims." New Ageism, spiritual realism,

Against these analyses, Okri has always rejected the categorisation of his work as magical realism, claiming that this categorisation is the result of laziness by critics and likening it to the observation that "a horse ... has four legs and a tail. That doesn't describe it." He has instead described his fiction as obeying a kind of "dream logic" and said that it is often preoccupied with the "philosophical conundrum ... what is reality?" insisting that:

:I grew up in a tradition where there are simply more dimensions to reality: legends and myths and ancestors and spirits and death ... Which brings the question: what is reality? Everyone's reality is different. For different perceptions of reality we need a different language. We like to think that the world is rational and precise and exactly how we see it, but something erupts in our reality which makes us sense that there's more to the fabric of life. I'm fascinated by the mysterious element that runs through our lives. Everyone is looking out of the world through their emotion and history. Nobody has an absolute reality.

Okri has noted the effect of personal choices: "Beware of the stories you read or tell; subtly, at night, beneath the waters of consciousness, they are altering your world."

As well as novels, Okri's published books include collections of poetry, essays and short stories. His short fiction has been described as more realistic and less fantastic than his novels, but it also depicts Africans in communion with spirits,

Okri has also written plays and film scripts, such as the text to Peter Krüger's film N – The Madness of Reason, which won the 2015 Ensor Award for Best Film. In 2018, Okri adapted Albert Camus's novella The Outsider as a play for the Print Room at The Coronet Theatre.

In April 2019, Okri gave the keynote address at the second Berlin African Book Festival, curated by Tsitsi Dangarembga.

Okri's volume of collected poems, A Fire in My Head: Poems for the Dawn, was published in 2021, its title inspired by a line in Wole Soyinka's poem "Death in the Dawn": "May you never walk / when the road waits, famished."

Alongside his writing, Okri has maintained an interest in visual art since his youth, and in 2023, he collaborated with colourist painter Rosemary Clunie in Firedreams, at the Bomb Factory, Marylebone, an exhibition of "WordArt" that featured large-scale paintings and sculptural obstructions. Okri and Clunie, his long-time friend, had previously brought together their paintings and stories in the 2017 book The Magic Lamp: Dreams of Our Age.

Influences

Okri has described his work as influenced as much by the philosophical texts on his father's bookshelves as by literature, and cites the influence of Francis Bacon and Michel de Montaigne on his A Time for New Dreams. His literary influences include Aesop's Fables, Arabian Nights, Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, and critics have noted a close relationship between Blake and Okri's poetry.

Okri also was influenced by the oral tradition of his people and, particularly, by his mother's storytelling: "If my mother wanted to make a point, she wouldn't correct me, she'd tell me a story." His firsthand experiences of civil war in Nigeria are said to have inspired many of his works.

On the final day of the 2021 COP26 climate meeting in Glasgow, Okri wrote about the existential threat posed by the climate crisis and how illequipped humans seem to confront the prospect of their self-inflicted extinction. Indeed, Okri says: "We have to find a new art and a new psychology to penetrate the apathy and the denial that are preventing us making the changes that are inevitable if our world is to survive." | access-date = 2021-11-12

Honours and awards

Okri was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2001 Birthday Honours for services to literature and knighted in the 2023 Birthday Honours, also for services to literature.

• 1987: Commonwealth Writers Prize (Africa Region, Best Book) – Incidents at the Shrine
• 1987: Aga Khan Prize for Fiction – The Dream Vendor's August
• 1988: Guardian Fiction Prize – Stars of the New Curfew (shortlisted)
• 1991–1993: Fellow Commoner in Creative Arts (FCCA), Trinity College, Cambridge
• 1991: Booker Prize – The Famished Road
• 1993: Chianti Ruffino-Antico Fattore International Literary Prize – The Famished Road
• 1994: Premio Grinzane Cavour (Italy) -The Famished Road
• 1995: Crystal Award (World Economic Forum)
• 1997: Honorary Doctorate of Literature, awarded by University of Westminster
• 1997: Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature
• 1999: (Italy) – Dangerous Love
• 2002: Honorary Doctorate of Literature, awarded by University of Essex
• 2003: Chosen as one of 100 Great Black Britons
• 2004: Honorary Doctor of Literature, awarded by University of Exeter
• 2008: International Literary Award Novi Sad (International Novi Sad Literature Festival, Serbia)
• 2009: Honorary Doctorate of Utopia, awarded by Universiteit voor het Algemeen Belang, Belgium
• 2010: Honorary Doctorate, awarded by the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
• 2010: Honorary Doctorate of Arts, awarded by the University of Bedfordshire
• 2014: Honorary Doctorate from the University of Pretoria
• 2014: Honorary Fellow, Mansfield College, Oxford
• 2014: Bad Sex in Fiction Award, Literary Review--
• 2020: Honorary Doctorate of Literature awarded by Nelson Mandela University

Works

Novels

• Flowers and Shadows (Harlow: Longman, 1980)
• The Landscapes Within (Harlow: Longman, 1981)
• The Famished Road (London: Jonathan Cape, 1991)
• Songs of Enchantment (London: Jonathan Cape, 1993)
• Astonishing the Gods (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1995)
• Dangerous Love (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1996)
• Infinite Riches (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1998)
• In Arcadia (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2002)
• Starbook (London: Rider Books, 2007)
• The Age of Magic (London: Head of Zeus, 2014)
• The Freedom Artist (London: Head of Zeus, 2019)
• Every Leaf a Hallelujah (London: Head of Zeus, 2021)
• The Last Gift of the Master Artists (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2022)

Poetry, essays and short story collections

• Incidents at the Shrine (short stories; London: Heinemann, 1986)
• Stars of the New Curfew (short stories; London: Secker & Warburg, 1988)
• An African Elegy (poetry; London: Jonathan Cape, 1992)
• Birds of Heaven (essays; London: Phoenix House, 1996)
• A Way of Being Free (essays; London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson: 1997; London: Phoenix House, 1997)
• Mental Fight (poetry: London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1999; London: Phoenix House, 1999)
• Tales of Freedom (short stories; London: Rider & Co., 2009)
• A Time for New Dreams (essays; London: Rider & Co., 2011)
• Wild (poetry; London: Rider & Co., 2012)
• The Mystery Feast: Thoughts on Storytelling (West Hoathly: Clairview Books, Ltd, 2015)
• The Magic Lamp: Dreams of Our Age, with paintings by Rosemary Clunie (Apollo/Head of Zeus, 2017)
• Prayer for the Living: Stories (London: Head of Zeus, 2019)
• A Fire in My Head: Poems for the Dawn (London: Head of Zeus, 2021)
• Tiger Work (London: Apollo, an imprint of Head of Zeus, 2023)

As editor

• Rise Like Lions: Poetry for the Many (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2018, )
• African Stories (London: Everyman's Library Pocket Classics, 2025, )

Film

• N – The Madness of Reason (feature film, directed by Peter Krüger, 2014)

Online fiction

References

References

1. "[http://literature.britishcouncil.org/ben-okri Ben Okri"], British Council, ''Writers Directory''. {{Webarchive. link. (2 March 2012 .)
2. [https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/jun/12/benokri "Ben Okri"], Editors, ''The Guardian'', 22 July 2008.
3. Anrys, Stefaan. (26 August 2009). "Interview with Booker Prize laureate Ben Okri".
4. link. (16 January 2013 .)
5. (15 March 1959). "Ben Okri {{!}} The Booker Prizes".
6. Davies, Caroline. (16 June 2023). "Martin Amis, Ian McEwan and Anna Wintour honoured in king's birthday list". The Guardian.
7. Jaggi, Maya. (10 August 2007). "Free spirit". The Guardian.
8. Rix, Juliet. (25 June 2010). "Ben Okri: My family values". The Guardian.
9. Frailey, Paul. (28 December 2011). "Ben Okri (1959–)".
10. ((The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica)). (11 March 2021). "Ben Okri".
11. [https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/jun/12/benokri Ben Okri profile], ''The Guardian''.
12. Sethi, Anita. (1 September 2011). "Ben Okri: novelist as dream weaver". TheNational.
13. Venning, Nicola. (3 August 2014). "Time and place: Ben Okri". [[The Sunday Times]].
14. [https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03rxtfp "Ben Okri"], ''The Cultural Frontline'', BBC World Service, 1 May 2016.
15. Davies, Paul. (1 February 2023). "Video Interview {{!}} 'You do this or you die': how Ben Okri wrote The Famished Road".
16. Okri, Ben. (20 May 2023). "How I wrote the Famished Road". The Sun.
17. Allen, Katie. (26 April 2012). "Okri made Caine Prize vice-president".
18. (28 November 2022). "Central announces its new Vice Presidents".
19. "The Booker Prizes Backlist {{!}} The Booker Prizes".
20. (30 August 1993). "Songs of Enchantment".
21. (15 July 1993). "Songs of Enchantment".
22. McCabe, Douglas (2005). "'Higher Realities': New Age Spirituality in Ben Okri's ''The Famished Road''." ''Research in African Literatures'', vol. 36, no. 4, 1–21.
23. Alternative characterisations of Okri's work suggest an allegiance to [[Yoruba people. Yoruba folklore]],[[Ato Quayson. Quayson, Ato]] (1997), ''Transformations in Nigerian Writing'' (Oxford: James Currey).
24. [[magic realism
25. [http://wordsmith.org/words/superbity.html "A Thought for Today ... Ben Okri"], Wordsmith.org, 15 March 2017.
26. [https://benokri.co.uk/ "Poet, Novelist, Artist"]. benokri.co.uk.
27. "Ben Okri {{!}} Fellow". [[Society of Authors]].
28. Murua, James. (9 April 2019). "A snapshot of the African Book Festival 2019 in Berlin, Germany".
29. O' Malley, JP. (9 December 2022). "Nigeria's Ben Okri: 'At its best, poetry draws our attention away from smallness'".
30. (17 March 2023). "Firedreams, Ben Okri and Rosemary Clunie - Bomb Factory Marylebone". The Bomb Factory Art Foundation.
31. (22 March 2023). "'Ben Okri & Rosemary Clunie: firedreams' at The Bomb Factory, London". [[Lisson Gallery.
32. Okri, Ben. (21 March 2023). "Ben Okri on swapping novels for painting: 'Could these two great rivers of creativity merge?'". The Guardian.
33. [https://www.scotsman.com/arts-and-culture/books/interview-ben-okri-booker-prize-winning-novelist-and-poet-2461748 "Interview: Ben Okri – Booker prize-winning novelist and poet"], ''[[The Scotsman]]'', 5 March 2010.
34. Vogel, Saskia. (7 April 2011). "Interview: Ben Okri".
35. And did those feet ...]]",Okri, Ben (1999), ''Mental Fight: An Anti-Spell for the 21st Century'' (London: Phoenix House), 1.
36. Green, Matthew J. A. (2009), "Dreams of Freedom: Magical Realism and Visionary Materialism in Okri and Blake", ''Romanticism'', vol. 15, no. 1, 18–32.
37. (13 June 2001). "Ben Okri: A writer honoured". BBC News.
38. (2011-06-24). "Ben Okri features in Glo/CNN African Voices".
39. {{London Gazette. (17 June 2023)
40. "Ben Okri {{!}} Encyclopedia.com".
41. (2014-09-16). "Acclaimed Author – Ben Okri".
42. Flood, Alison. (2012-02-13). "Ben Okri erupts at editor over 'rewriting' claim". The Guardian.
43. (21 September 2017). "Creative Arts Fellowship marks 50 years". Trinity College, Cambridge.
44. (January 1991). "The Famished Road {{!}} The Booker Prizes".
45. "Ben Okri - Literature".
46. "Ben Okri".
47. Aghadiuno, Eric. "Ben Okri - OnlineNigeria.com".
48. (2023-09-01). "Okri, Ben".
49. "UniVerse :: A United Nations of Poetry :: Ben Okri".
50. "Honorary Graduates - Honorary Graduates - University of Essex".
51. [https://100greatblackbritons.com/list.html ''100 Great Black Britons''] {{Webarchive. link. (24 June 2021 website.)
52. "Ben Okri".
53. (27 August 2014). "Novi Sad International Literature Festival - Literature Across Frontiers".
54. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jWR4nWwWgU "Honorary Degree in Utopia for Ben Okri - Antwerp, Belgium 2010"], YouTube, 10 March 2015.
55. "SOAS Awards Honorary Doctorate to Mr Ben Okri OBE".
56. "About Ben Okri {{!}} Awards and honours".
57. (2014-04-23). "South African university honours Nigerian author, Ben Okri".
58. (23 April 2014). "Nigerian writer,Ben Okri to be honoured by South African varsity".
59. "Booker Prize-winning author in conversation for Ken Hom annual lecture - Oxford Brookes University".
60. Beckman, Jonathan. (December 2014). "Twitching Fairy Penguin".
61. [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-30307247 "Bad Sex in Fiction: Ben Okri scoops 2014 prize"], BBC News, 3 December 2014.
62. "Ben Okri 2020 {{!}} Doctor of Literature (Honoris Causa)". Nelson Mandela University.
63. Okri, Ben.. (1989). "Flowers and shadows". Longman.
64. "The Ben Okri Bibliography: Primary Sources".
65. (1991-10-23). "Nigerian Wins British Fiction Award". The New York Times.
66. Taylor, Paul. (21 March 1993). "BOOK REVIEW / Dreams of a boy on earth: 'Songs of Enchantment' - Ben Okri: Cape, 14.99 pounds". [[The Independent]].
67. "Ben Okri, Writer, Author, Nigeria Personality Profiles".
68. "Dangerous Love". Bloomsbury {{!}} House of Zeus.
69. (2015). "Ben Okri: A Selective Bibliography". [[Callaloo (literary magazine).
70. Hickling, Alfred. (2002-10-12). "Review: In Arcadia by Ben Okri". The Guardian.
71. (2014-12-03). "Author Okri receives bad sex prize". BBC News.
72. Merritt, Stephanie. "Book of the day {{!}} The Freedom Artist by Ben Okri review – wake-up call of a world without books". The Guardian.
73. Ellingham, Miles. (18 December 2021). "Every Leaf a Hallelujah by Ben Okri — a plea from the forest".
74. (31 January 2023). "The Last Gift of the Master Artists". Other Press, LLC.
75. (2015). "Ben Okri: A Selective Bibliography". Project MUSE.
76. Alleyne, Richard. (2012-02-11). "Ben Okri 'disappointment' at editor he claims re-wrote his work". Daily Telegraph.
77. mjs76. "Visiting Professor - Ben Okri OBE FRSL — University of Leicester".
78. Gray, Rosemary. (2018-07-01). "Ben Okri's Aphorisms: "Music on the Wings of a Soaring Bird"". Academic Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies.
79. (9 October 2014). "A Way of Being Free". Head of Zeus.
80. Hattersley, Roy. (21 August 1999). "A man in two minds". The Guardian.
81. Daniel, Lucy. (2009-04-30). "Tales of Freedom by Ben Okri: review". Daily Telegraph.
82. "The Ben Okri Bibliography: On the Internet".
83. Birat, Kathie. (2015). "'Through a Bending Light': Ben Okri's Poetic Commitment". Commonwealth Essays and Studies.
84. Okri, Ben. (4 November 2015). "Under the Sun: a meditation by Ben Okri on stories". [[The Irish Times]].
85. Coughlan, Philipa. (1 February 2019). "The Magic Lamp: Dreams of Our Age by Ben Okri".
86. Swirsky, Rebecca. (10 March 2018). "Ben Okri's The Magic Lamp is a collection of morally ambiguous tales for our trying times".
87. "Prayer for the Living". Head of Zeus.
88. Oloko, Babi. (2 February 2021). "The Immensity of Brevity: On Ben Okri's 'Prayer for the Living'".
89. Hackett, Tamsin. (1 July 2020). "Ben Okri's first poetry collection in eight years goes to Head of Zeus".
90. Peterson, Angeline. (15 January 2021). "Ben Okri's First Poetry Collection in Nine Years is Out Now".
91. "Tiger Work by Ben Okri: 9781635423365 {{!}} PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books".
92. "Rise Like Lions". Hodder & Stoughton.
93. Jackson, Jeff. (September 2018). "Books {{!}} Rise Like Lions: Poetry for the Many".
94. "African Stories". [[Penguin Random House]].
95. link. (2 April 2015 .)