Landmark is level 2 of 4 in the Nigeria Hall of Fame: a first that opened a door, or the pre-eminent figure of their generation in this country. See how the levels work.
Why they are here
His novel The Famished Road won the Booker Prize in 1991, and brought a Nigerian magical realism into the centre of English-language fiction.
Ben Okri was born in Minna, spent his early childhood in London while his father read law, and returned to a Nigeria that went into civil war shortly afterwards. He came back to England at nineteen, and spent a period homeless and sleeping in parks while writing.
The Famished Road, published in 1991, won the Booker Prize when he was thirty-two, then the youngest winner in the prize's history. Its narrator, Azaro, is an abiku — a spirit-child who keeps being born and dying and returning — and the book moves between the road, the forest, the bar and the spirit world without ever marking a boundary between them, because in the world it describes there is not one. Songs of Enchantment and Infinite Riches complete the sequence.
He has written more than twenty books of fiction, poetry and essays, was made an OBE, and has served as a vice-president of English PEN. The Famished Road is the book most often named when people argue that African fiction in English had stopped explaining itself to a European reader.
The Famished Road, published in 1991, won the Booker Prize when he was thirty-two, then the youngest winner in the prize's history. Its narrator, Azaro, is an abiku — a spirit-child who keeps being born and dying and returning — and the book moves between the road, the forest, the bar and the spirit world without ever marking a boundary between them, because in the world it describes there is not one. Songs of Enchantment and Infinite Riches complete the sequence.
He has written more than twenty books of fiction, poetry and essays, was made an OBE, and has served as a vice-president of English PEN. The Famished Road is the book most often named when people argue that African fiction in English had stopped explaining itself to a European reader.
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