Ben Okri by Chris Boland. Retrieved from flickr.com, licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 (accessed: December 30, 2021).
Ben Okri
, b. 1959
Ben Okri is a Nigerian poet and novelist. He was born in Nigeria in 1959. His father, Silver, later moved to England to study law and they all moved to England together. In 1968 his father returned to Nigeria and offered free services to people who couldn’t afford a lawyer. Back in Nigeria, Okri is confronted daily with the Nigerian civil war and his friends who tell him the stories of how they see spirits. All of these influenced his early works. He wrote against the Nigerian government, and because of that he entered the government’s death list and was forced to move to England. While in England, he studied Comparative Literature in Essex University. During his study period, he had financial problems, though he has rather termed this period the most important in the whole of his writing career. This is because, he says, something dramatic happened with his writing and he tended to write more during this period. His first novel was Flowers and Shadows. His reputation as author began with his book The Famished Road which earned him the Booker prize. His latest work, The Freedom Artist, was published in 2019.
Source:
Bennett, Robert, "Ben Okri (1959)", Postcolonial African Writers: A Bio-Biographical Critical Sourcebook. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1998, 364–373.
Bio prepared by Eleanor A. Dasi, University of Yaoundé 1, wandasi5@yahoo.com and Lywellyn Saha Tata, University of Yaoundé 1, lywellynasah@gmail.com
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