Ben Okri, born on March 15, 1959, in Minna, Nigeria, is a celebrated Nigerian poet and novelist known for his use of magic realism to depict the social and political chaos in his birth country. He is a member of the Urhobo people; his father was Urhobo, and his mother was half- Igbo. His contributions to literature have earned him international acclaim, establishing him as one of Africa’s leading writers.
Ben Okri at Hay Festival 2023.
His father, Silver, moved his family to London when Okri was less than two years old so that Silver could study law. Okri thus spent his earliest years in London and attended primary school in Peckham. In 1968 Silver moved his family back to Nigeria where he practised law in Lagos, providing free or discounted services for those who could not afford it.
Early Life and Education
Okri attended Urhobo College in Warri, Nigeria, and later the University of Essex in Colchester, England. At the age of 14, after being rejected for admission to a short university program 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.
In 1978, he moved back to England and studied comparative literature at Essex University with a grant from the Nigerian government. 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... "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....
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My Top 10 Magical-Realism Books! Exploring Enchanting Stories and Surreal Worlds
Example of magic realism in Ben Okri's works.
Literary Career
Okri’s success as a writer began when he published his first novel Flowers and Shadows, at the age of 21. His first novels, Flowers and Shadows (1980) and The Landscapes Within (1981), employ surrealistic images to depict the corruption and lunacy of a politically scarred country. He then served West Africa magazine as poetry editor from 1983 to 1986 and was a regular contributor to the BBC World Service between 1983 and 1985, continuing to publish throughout this period. For three years from 1988, he lived in a Notting Hill flat (rented from publisher friend Margaret Busby).
The short-story collections Incidents at the Shrine (1986) and Stars of the New Curfew (1988) portray the essential link in Nigerian culture between the physical world and the world of the spirits. Okri claimed 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.
The Booker Prize and International Recognition
His reputation as an author was secured when his novel The Famished Road won the Booker Prize for Fiction in 1991, making him the youngest ever winner of the prize. Okri won the Booker Prize for his novel The Famished Road (1991), the story of Azaro, an abiku (“spirit child”), and his quest for identity. The novels Songs of Enchantment (1993) and Infinite Riches (1998) continue the themes of The Famished Road, relating stories of dangerous quests and the struggle for equanimity in an unstable land.
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| Year | Title | Type |
|---|---|---|
| 1980 | Flowers and Shadows | Novel |
| 1981 | The Landscapes Within | Novel |
| 1986 | Incidents at the Shrine | Short-story collection |
| 1988 | Stars of the New Curfew | Short-story collection |
| 1991 | The Famished Road | Novel |
| 1993 | Songs of Enchantment | Novel |
| 1998 | Infinite Riches | Novel |
Themes and Influences
Okri has described his work as influenced as much by the philosophical texts in his father’s book shelves, as it was by literature, and Okri cites the influence of both 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 Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”. Okri’s 1999 epic poem, Mental Fight, also is named after a quotation from the poet William Blake’s “And did those feet … “, and critics have noted the close relationship between Blake and Okri’s poetry.
Although typically not overtly political, Okri’s works nevertheless convey clear and urgent messages about the need for Africans to reforge their identities.
Later Works and Recognition
Okri’s other works included An African Elegy (1992), a collection of poems that urges Africans to overcome the forces of chaos within their countries, and the long poem Mental Flight (1999). Other volumes of poetry included Wild (2012), Rise Like Lions: Poetry for the Many (2018), and A Fire in My Head: Poems for the Dawn (2021). His short-story collections from this time included Prayer for the Living (2019). A Way of Being Free (1997) and A Time for New Dreams (2011) are collections of Okri’s essays.
Okri was made an honorary vice-president of the English Centre for the International PEN and a member of the board of the Royal National Theatre. 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 ill‑equipped humans seem to confront the prospect of their self-inflicted extinction.
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