Ben Okri, (born 15 March 1959 in Minna, northern Nigeria, to an Igbo mother and Urhobo father) is a poet and novelist. Having spent his early childhood in London, he and his family returned to Nigeria in 1968. He later came back to England, embarking on studies at the University of Essex. He has received honorary doctorates from the University of Westminster (1997) and the University of Essex (2002), and was awarded an OBE in 2001.
Ben is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Translated into more than 20 languages, Ben has been awarded numerous international prizes including the Booker Prize in 1991, the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Africa, the Aga Kahn Prize for Fiction, and was presented with a Crystal Award by the World Economic Forum.
Ben Okri Reads from His Poem 10 ½ Intonations
The Famished Road
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Paperback: 512 pages
Publisher: Anchor (May 1, 1993)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0385425139
ISBN-13: 978-0385425131
Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.3 x 0.9 inches
Okri won the 1991 Booker Prize, the Premio Grinzane Cavour (Italy) and the 1993 Chianti Ruffino-Antico Fattore International Literary Prize for The Famished Road.
It is the first book in a trilogy which includes Songs of Enchantment (1994) and Infinite Riches (1999)
Set in an unnamed African country at an unspecified time (though the
similarities with Nigeria in the early 1960s are unmistakable), The Famished
Road is narrated by Azaro, an African spirit-child or abiku who, in the
folklore of southern Nigeria, is destined to move continually between life
and spiritual paradise in an unending cycle of infant death and rebirth.
Azaro, however, is tired of never staying long enough to experience life,
and decides on this occasion to remain, "to put", he says, "a smile on my
mother's face".
Pursued by vengeful spirits, and endowed with special powers that lead him
into mischief, Azaro introduces us to a whole world of wonders -- to his
mother and father, an impoverished market trader and a load carrier
struggling courageously to keep their dignity and their independence; to
Madame Koto, the local bar owner whose journey from innocence to corruption
mirrors the realities unfolding around her; to the politics, poverty and
brutal reality of life in a shanty town in post-colonial Africa; and to
Azaro's own intensely imagined visions. As political corruption becomes
endemic and as old tribal traditions clash with the forces of urbanisation,
the author shows us the extraordinary mix of hope and despair that
characterises his community and the sheer vitality of a society where, as
Okri has said, "the consequences of your actions are immediate and
unavoidable".
Deftly mixing mythical visions with naturalistic portrayal, the result is a
book of huge scope and originality which works on many levels -- as
political parable, social critique, cultural guidebook and spiritual
inspiration -- but whose central triumphis its depiction of tight-knit
family relations and the entrancing oddity of everyday life.
Songs of Enchantment
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Song of Enchantment is the 2nd book in a trilogy which begins with The Famished Road
Paperback: 297 pages
Publisher: Anchor; 1st Anchor Books ed edition (October 1, 1994)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0385471572
ISBN-13: 978-0385471572
Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.6 inches
In this remarkable sequel to his Booker Prize-winning novel The Famished Road, Okri continues the story of the spirit-child who is a reluctant but keen observer of his family's turmoil and the political convulsions of a struggling new Africa. Through his shimmering consciousness and hallucinatory visions, the boy finds the strength to survive.
Infinite Riches
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Infinite Riches is the 3rd book in a trilogy which begins with The Famished Road
Paperback: 394 pages
Publisher: Phoenix House (June 1999)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0753806800
ISBN-13: 978-0753806807
Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5.1 x 1.2 inches
This is a startling novel about different kinds of riches and different
forms of power. It opens another chapter in the adventures of Azaro, the
celebrated spirit-child of The Famished Road, winner of the Booker Prize. By
turns thunderous and tender, it will resonate in the mind and heart of the
reader for a long time.
Tales of Freedom
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(may not be available in USA ISBN-10: 1846041597,
Pun 2009)
Read an Excerpt from Tales of Freedom
As one of Britain's foremost poets, Ben Okri is rightly
acclaimed for his use of language. And as a Booker Prize winning novelist,
this skill was shown to particular effect in both Starbook (his most
recent work) and in The Famished Road.
In Tales of Freedom he brings both poetry and story together in a
fascinating new form, using writing and image pared down to their
essentials, where haiku and story meet. Thus we discover Pinprop, the slave
to an old couple lost in a clearing, who holds the keys to the universe in
his quirky hands. Then there is the beautifully dressed black Russian on the
train, helping to film a new version of 'Eugene Onegin'. Later, in the chaos
of the aftermath of war, orphaned children paint mysterious shapes of bulls,
birds, hybrid creatures, and we wonder if grief has unhinged them into
genius...And who is that woman, who hardly speaks, who presses a tiny flower
into the palm of the young boy on the bus, and then leaves his life forever?
Tales of Freedom offers a haunting necklace of images which flash and
sparkle as the light shines on them. Quick and stimulating to read, but
slowly burning in the memory, they offer a different, more transcendent way
of looking at our extreme, gritty world - and show the wealth of freedom
that's available beyond the confines of our usual perceptions.
Stars of the New
Curfew
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Paperback: 208 pages
Publisher: Vintage Books (April 27, 2010)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0099283883
ISBN-13: 978-0099283881
Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5 x 0.7 inches
1988 Guardian Fiction Prize (shortlist)
This collection of short stories is set in Nigeria and reflects the mad, exotic and often dangerous chaos which reigns there. They include jumbled up voodoo stories, stories of shanty towns and of men from the villages seeking their fortunes in the streets and filthy gutters of the new towns.
In Arcadia
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Paperback: 240 pages
Publisher: Orion (July 24, 2003)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0753817071
ISBN-13: 978-0753817070
Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5 x 0.9 inches
A group of angry and ill-assorted people accept an invitation to make a journey. Inspired by a painting and financed by a mysterious benefactor, they set off to discover the real Arcadia. Or what remains of it. Their journey begins in ignorance and chaos at Waterloo station and takes them through superstition and myth to harmony. In the Louvre, in front of Poussin's masterpiece, they begin to understand. 'In Arcadia takes that staple Shakespearean theme of appearance versus reality and uses it to explore the notion of paradise' Scotsman
Mental Fight
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Paperback: 80 pages
Publisher: Phoenix (an Imprint of The Orion Publishing Group Ltd ) (August
3, 2000)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0753810670
ISBN-13: 978-0753810675
Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 4.9 x 0.3 inches
This epic poem is intended as a celebration of humanity's achievements at
the end of this millennium, and a rallying cry for the next. Strongly
political, the poem touches on issues of racism, intolerance, and
environmental destruction, amongst others.
Dangerous Love
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Paperback: 399 pages
Publisher: Phoenix (an Imprint of The Orion Publishing Group Ltd ) (1999)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0753808633
ISBN-13: 978-0753808634
Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5 x 1.2 inches
Winner 2000 Premio Palmi (Italy)
Dangeous Love was originally published as The Landscapes Within in 1981
An epic of daily life, Dangerous Love is Ben Okri's most accessible and most disarming novel yet. It is a story of doomed love, of star-crossed lovers, separated not by their families, but by the very circumstances of their lives.
Astonishing the Gods
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Paperback: 158 pages
Publisher: Phoenix (an Imprint of The Orion Publishing Group Ltd ) (1999)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0753808641
ISBN-13: 978-0753808641
Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5 x 0.6 inches
From the Booker prize-winning author of The Famished Road comes this
bewitching novel. It is a modern fable about the relationship between love,
suffering and creativity. Set on an enchanted island, Astonishing the Gods
is shot through with the gentle magic of Ben Okri's imaginative prose.
A Way of Being Free
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Paperback: 144 pages
Publisher: Phoenix (an Imprint of The Orion Publishing Group Ltd ) (June 1,
1998)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0753801418
ISBN-13: 978-0753801413
Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5 x 0.5 inches
In this inspirational volume, the Booker Prize-winning author of THE FAMISHED ROAD makes essays into an art form. The ten pieces in this beautifully crafted collection range from the personal to the analytical, including a meditation on the role of the poet, a study of Picasso's Minotaur, a paean to human freedom in honour of Salman Rushdie, and an appraisal of fellow-Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe. Lyrical, imaginative and provocative, A Way Of Being Free confirms Ben Okri's status as one of the most inspiring of contempory writers.
Birds of Heaven
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Paperback: 64 pages
Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson History (December 22, 1995)
ISBN-10: 1857995937
ISBN-13: 978-1857995930
Product Dimensions: 5.1 x 4 x 0.2 inches
This text contains two inspirational essays from the author of "The Famished Road", on the meaning of language and its power to shape our lives. The work presents an alternative spiritual response to the problems of the present day.
Incidents at the Shrine
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Paperback: 136 pages
Publisher: Vintage; New Ed edition (January 1, 1993)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0099983001
ISBN-13: 978-0099983002
Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.1 x 0.5 inches
Awards for this novel include:
1987 Commonwealth Writers Prize (Africa Region, Best Book)
1987 Paris Review/Aga Khan Prize for Fiction
Starbook:
A Magical Tale of Love and Regeneration
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Paperback: 400 pages
Publisher: Random House Uk Ltd; Airport / Ireland / Export Ed edition
(August 31, 2007)
ISBN-10: 1846040914
ISBN-13: 978-1846040917
Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.3 x 1.3 inches
An African Elegy
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Paperback: 96 pages
Publisher: Vintage (April 24, 1997)
ISBN-10: 0099736012
ISBN-13: 978-0099736011
Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5 x 0.3 inches
A collection of poems reflecting Okri's concerns about Africa's colossal economic and political problems.
The Landscapes Within
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(Okri's 2nd Novel Published in 1981)
Paperback: 304 pages
Publisher: Prentice Hall Press (March 8, 1982)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0582785391
ISBN-13: 978-0582785397
"...traced the adventures of a young and poor painter in Lagos. "Ghetto-dwellers are the great fantasists," Okri said in an interview. "There was an extraordinary vibrancy there, an imaginative life. When you are that poor, all you've got left is your belief in the imagination." —Kuusankosken kaupunginkirjasto, Finland
Flowers and Shadows
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(Okri's Debut Novel Published in 1980)
Paperback: 272 pages
Publisher: Prentice Hall Press (July 1980)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0582643015
ISBN-13: 978-0582643017
"...about a successful businessman whose jealous relatives make his life difficult. The story was written in the broad tradition of Realism." —Kuusankosken kaupunginkirjasto, Finland
Related Links
Step into a World: A Global Anthology of the New Black Literature
Ben is included in this ground breaking anthology.
http://aalbc.com/authors/step_into_a_world.htm
AUTHOR INTERVIEW
Newsday, July 1992
Sitting at ease in a New York City hotel room, far from the central Nigerian town where he was born, the novelist Ben Okri remembers how he began writing at the age of 14. "On this particular day, it rained," he says, "and this day changed my life. Everybody was out and I was in, alone. I was sitting in the living room and I took out a piece of paper and drew what was on the mantelpiece. That took me about an hour. Then I took another piece of paper and wrote a poem. That must have taken me ten minutes. I looked at the drawing and I looked at the poem. The drawing was dreadful and the poem was . . . tolerable, bearable. And it became clear to me that this was more my natural area." Stories have always been at the heart of his writing. The Famished Road, a novel, is a nearly encyclopaedic collection of tales about its boy-hero, Azaro, as he moves easily between the world of the flesh and the world of spirits. This generous storytelling comes naturally to Okri.
"You see," he says, "I was told stories, we were all told stories as kids in Nigeria. We had to tell stories that would keep one another interested, and you weren't allowed to tell stories that everybody else knew. You had to dream up new ones.
And it never occurred to us that those stories actually contained a unique worldview. It's very much like the river that runs through your backyard. It's always there. It never occurs to you to take a photograph or to seek its mythology. It's just there; it runs in your veins, it runs in your spirit.
And for me, it was only after I had made too deep a journey into modernism, after I had begun to feel that my ambition was better than my craft, after a period of loneliness and homesickness away from Nigeria, that slowly all those old stories came back to me with new faces and new voices. And I saw that all human beings have their signatures stamped in the stories they tell themselves in dreams, the stories that are embedded in their childhood."
Also embedded in Okri's childhood are memories of civil war in Nigeria, of the constant high-life music of his youth, of his secondary education 400 miles away from his family in Lagos (the sheer travelling involved was a good experience because, he says, "it earthed me among my people") and of his later move to England, where he studied at the University of Essex.
Ben Okri on eBooks Versus Physical Books
Related Links
Detailed Biorgraphy
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/okri.htm
Biographical materialobtained Okri's Facebook page and Wikipedia
