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Ben Okri

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Sir Ben Golden Emuobowho Okri Template:Post-nominals (born 15 March 1959) is a Nigerian-born British poet and novelist.<ref name=britishcouncil>"Ben Okri", British Council, Writers Directory. Template:Webarchive.</ref> Considered one of the foremost African authors in the postmodern and post-colonial traditions,<ref name=guardian-profile>"Ben Okri", Editors, The Guardian, 22 July 2008.</ref><ref name=mo>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Okri has been compared favourably to authors such as Salman Rushdie and Gabriel García Márquez.<ref>Dorsman, Robert (2000), "Ben Okri", Poetry International Web. Template:Webarchive.</ref> In 1991, his novel The Famished Road won the Booker Prize.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Okri was knighted at the 2023 Birthday Honours for services to literature.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

BiographyEdit

Early years and educationEdit

Ben Okri is a member of the Urhobo people; his father was Urhobo, and his mother was half-Igbo ("from a royal family").<ref name=britishcouncil/><ref name=freespirit>Template:Cite news</ref> He was born in Minna in west central Nigeria to Grace and Silver Okri in 1959.<ref name=freespirit /> His father, Silver, moved his family to London, England, when Okri was less than two years old<ref name=mo/> so that he could study law.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Okri thus spent his earliest years in London and attended primary school in Peckham.<ref name=guardian-profile/> In 1966, Silver moved his family back to Nigeria,<ref name="BlackPast">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> where he practised law in Lagos, providing free or discounted services for those who could not afford it.<ref name=freespirit/> After attending schools in Ibadan and Ikenne, Okri began his secondary education at Urhobo College at Warri,<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>Ben Okri profile, The Guardian.</ref> in 1968, when he was the youngest in his class.<ref name="BlackPast"/> His exposure to the Nigerian civil war<ref name=sethi>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> and a culture in which his peers at the time claimed to have had visions of spirits<ref name=mo/> 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.<ref name=scotsmaninterview/> He began writing articles on social and political issues, but these never found a publisher.<ref name=scotsmaninterview/> He then wrote short stories based on those articles, and some were published in women's journals and evening papers.<ref name=scotsmaninterview/> 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.<ref name=mo/>

Move to England, 1978Edit

In 1978, he moved back to England and studied comparative literature at Essex University with a grant from the Nigerian government.<ref name="ST">Template:Cite news</ref><ref name=scotsmaninterview/> 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."<ref name=scotsmaninterview/>

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

His reputation as an author was secured when his novel The Famished Road won the Booker Prize for Fiction in 1991,<ref name=britishcouncil/><ref>"Ben Okri: 'The Famished Road was written to give myself reasons to liveTemplate:'", The Guardian, 15 March 2016.</ref> making him the prize's youngest ever winner at 32.<ref>"Ben Okri", The Cultural Frontline, BBC World Service, 1 May 2016.</ref> 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,<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> 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."<ref name="ST" />

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.<ref name=britishcouncil/><ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

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.<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref>

Okri was appointed as a vice-president of the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in 2022.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Literary careerEdit

File:Quote by Ben Okri on the Memorial Gates at the Hyde Park Corner end of Constitution Hill in London, UK.jpg
Quote from Okri's Mental Fight on the Memorial Gates, London

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.<ref name=guardian-profile/><ref name=mo/>

His best known work, The Famished Road, which won the 1991 Booker Prize,<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> along with Songs of Enchantment (1993)<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> 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.<ref name=britishcouncil/>

Okri's work is particularly difficult to categorise. It has been widely called postmodern,<ref name=higher-realities>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.</ref> 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."<ref name=higher-realities/> Alternative characterisations of Okri's work suggest an allegiance to Yoruba folklore,<ref>Quayson, Ato (1997), Transformations in Nigerian Writing (Oxford: James Currey).</ref> New Ageism,<ref name=higher-realities/><ref name=spiritual-realism>Appiah, Anthony K. (3–10 August 1992), "Spiritual Realism". Review of The Famished Road, by Ben Okri. The Nation, 146–148.</ref> spiritual realism,<ref name=spiritual-realism/> magical realism,<ref name=dreams-of-freedom/> visionary materialism,<ref name=dreams-of-freedom/> and existentialism.<ref>Obumselu, Ben (2011), "Ben Okri's The Famished Road: A Re-Evaluation." Tydskrif vir Letterkunde, vol. 48, no. 1, 26–38.</ref>

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."<ref name=mo/> He has instead described his fiction as obeying a kind of "dream logic"<ref name=sethi/> and said that it is often preoccupied with the "philosophical conundrum ... what is reality?"<ref name=scotsmaninterview/> 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.<ref name=sethi/>

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."<ref>"A Thought for Today ... Ben Okri", Wordsmith.org, 15 March 2017.</ref>

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,<ref name=britishcouncil/> while his poetry and nonfiction have a more overt political tone, focusing on the potential of Africa and the world to overcome the problems of modernity.<ref name=britishcouncil/><ref>Okri, Ben, "A Time for New Dreams", an interview with Claire Armitstead, RSA. London, 4 April 2011. Template:Webarchive.</ref>

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.<ref name="benokri.co.uk bio">"Poet, Novelist, Artist". benokri.co.uk.</ref> In 2018, Okri adapted Albert Camus's novella The Outsider as a play for the Print Room at The Coronet Theatre.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

In April 2019, Okri gave the keynote address at the second Berlin African Book Festival, curated by Tsitsi Dangarembga.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

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."<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

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.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> 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.<ref name="benokri.co.uk bio" /><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

InfluencesEdit

Okri has described his work as influenced as much by the philosophical texts on his father's bookshelves as by literature,<ref name=scotsmaninterview>"Interview: Ben Okri – Booker prize-winning novelist and poet", The Scotsman, 5 March 2010.</ref> and cites the influence of Francis Bacon and Michel de Montaigne on his A Time for New Dreams.<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref> His literary influences include Aesop's Fables, Arabian Nights, Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream,<ref name=sethi/> and Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.<ref name=scotsmaninterview /> Okri's 1999 epic poem, Mental Fight, is named after a quotation from the poet William Blake's "And did those feet ...",<ref>Okri, Ben (1999), Mental Fight: An Anti-Spell for the 21st Century (London: Phoenix House), 1.</ref> and critics have noted a close relationship between Blake and Okri's poetry.<ref name=dreams-of-freedom>Green, Matthew J. A. (2009), "Dreams of Freedom: Magical Realism and Visionary Materialism in Okri and Blake", Romanticism, vol. 15, no. 1, 18–32.</ref>

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."<ref name=sethi/> His firsthand experiences of civil war in Nigeria are said to have inspired many of his works.<ref name=sethi />

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 illTemplate:Nbhyphequipped 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."<ref name="okri-2021"> Template:Cite news </ref>

Honours and awardsEdit

Okri was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2001 Birthday Honours for services to literature<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> and knighted in the 2023 Birthday Honours, also for services to literature.<ref>Template:London Gazette</ref>

  • 1987: Commonwealth Writers Prize (Africa Region, Best Book) – Incidents at the Shrine<ref name=encyclopedia.com>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

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  • 2002: Honorary Doctorate of Literature, awarded by University of Essex<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

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  • 2010: Honorary Doctorate of Arts, awarded by the University of Bedfordshire<ref name="About Ben Okri">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

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WorksEdit

NovelsEdit

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  • The Last Gift of the Master Artists (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2022)<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Poetry, essays and short story collectionsEdit

  • Incidents at the Shrine (short stories; London: Heinemann, 1986)<ref name="Project MUSE 2015 Bibliography ">Template:Cite journal</ref>
  • Stars of the New Curfew (short stories; London: Secker & Warburg, 1988)<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
  • An African Elegy (poetry; London: Jonathan Cape, 1992)<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

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  • Birds of Heaven (essays; London: Phoenix House, 1996)<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
  • A Way of Being Free (essays; London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson: 1997; London: Phoenix House, 1997)<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
  • Mental Fight (poetry: London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1999; London: Phoenix House, 1999)<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
  • Tales of Freedom (short stories; London: Rider & Co., 2009)<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
  • A Time for New Dreams (essays; London: Rider & Co., 2011)<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

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  • Wild (poetry; London: Rider & Co., 2012)<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
  • The Mystery Feast: Thoughts on Storytelling (West Hoathly: Clairview Books, Ltd, 2015)<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
  • The Magic Lamp: Dreams of Our Age, with paintings by Rosemary Clunie (Apollo/Head of Zeus, 2017)<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

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  • Prayer for the Living: Stories (London: Head of Zeus, 2019)<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

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  • A Fire in My Head: Poems for the Dawn (London: Head of Zeus, 2021)<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

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  • Tiger Work (London: Apollo, an imprint of Head of Zeus, 2023)<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

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As editorEdit

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FilmEdit

Online fictionEdit

ReferencesEdit

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Further readingEdit

External linksEdit

InterviewsEdit

Selected poemsEdit

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