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Sir Ben Golden Emuobowho Okri (born 15 March 1959) is a Nigerians-born British poet and novelist." Ben Okri", British Council, Writers Directory. . Considered one of the foremost African authors in the postmodern and post-colonial traditions, "Ben Okri", Editors, The Guardian, 22 July 2008. Okri has been compared favourably to authors such as Salman Rushdie and Gabriel García Márquez.Dorsman, Robert (2000), "Ben Okri", Poetry International Web. . In 1991, his novel The Famished Road won the Booker Prize. Okri was knighted at the 2023 Birthday Honours for services to literature.
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.
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, "Ben Okri: 'The Famished Road was written to give myself reasons to live, The Guardian, 15 March 2016. making him the prize's youngest ever winner at 32. "Ben Okri", The Cultural Frontline, BBC World Service, 1 May 2016. 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:
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, 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.
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,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. 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." Alternative characterisations of Okri's work suggest an allegiance to Yoruba people,Ato Quayson (1997), Transformations in Nigerian Writing (Oxford: James Currey). ,Anthony Appiah (3–10 August 1992), "Spiritual Realism". Review of The Famished Road, by Ben Okri. The Nation, 146–148. spiritual realism, magic realism, visionary materialism, and existentialism.Obumselu, Ben (2011), "Ben Okri's The Famished Road: A Re-Evaluation." Tydskrif vir Letterkunde, vol. 48, no. 1, 26–38.
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:
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." "A Thought for Today ... Ben Okri", Wordsmith.org, 15 March 2017.
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, 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.Okri, Ben, "A Time for New Dreams", an interview with Claire Armitstead, RSA. London, 4 April 2011. .
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. "Poet, Novelist, Artist". benokri.co.uk. 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.
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."
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 actually intensified."
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.
Influences
Okri has described his work as influenced as much by the philosophical texts on his father's bookshelves as by literature, "Interview: Ben Okri – Booker prize-winning novelist and poet", The Scotsman, 5 March 2010. 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 Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Okri's 1999 epic poem, Mental Fight, is named after a quotation from the poet William Blake's "And did those feet ...",Okri, Ben (1999), Mental Fight: An Anti-Spell for the 21st Century (London: Phoenix House), 1. and critics have noted a close relationship between Blake and Okri's poetry.Green, Matthew J. A. (2009), "Dreams of Freedom: Magical Realism and Visionary Materialism in Okri and Blake", Romanticism, vol. 15, no. 1, 18–32.
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 Knight Bachelor in the 2023 Birthday Honours, also for services to literature.
Works
Novels
Poetry, essays and short story collections
As editor
Film
Online fiction
Further reading
External links
Interviews
Selected poems
Categories: 1959 Births, Living People, 20th-century English Novelists, 20th-century Nigerian Essayists, 20th-century Nigerian Male Writers, 20th-century Nigerian Novelists, 20th-century Nigerian Poets, 20th-century Short Story Writers, 21st-century Nigerian Essayists, 21st-century Nigerian Male Writers, 21st-century Nigerian Novelists, 21st-century Nigerian Poets, 21st-century Nigerian Short Story Writers, Alumni Of The University Of Essex, Black British Writers, Booker Prize Winners, English Fantasy Writers, English Male Novelists, English People Of Nigerian Descent, Fellows Of The Royal Society Of Literature, Knights Bachelor, Magical Realism Writers, Nigerian Emigrants To The United Kingdom, Nigerian Fantasy Writers, Nigerian Male Novelists, Nigerian Male Poets, Nigerian Male Short Story Writers, Officers Of The Order Of The British Empire, Nigerian Recipients Of British Titles, People From Minna, People From Peckham, The New Yorker People, Urhobo People, Weird Fiction Writers
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