Ben Okri

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Literary career

Since the debut of his first book, Flowers and Shadows, in 1980, Okri has risen to international prominence, and he is often regarded as one of Africa's best writers. The Famished Road, his 1991 booker Award winner, as well as Songs of Enchantment (1993) and Infinite Riches (1998), make up a trilogy that follows Azaro, a spirit-child narrator, through a social and political turmoil in an African nation that is reminiscent of Okri's remembrance of war-torn Nigeria.

Okri's work is particularly difficult to categorize. Despite being widely characterized as post-modern, some scholars have noted that the apparent realism with which he portrays the spirit-world challenges this classification has earned it. If Okri attributes truth to a spiritual world, it is said that his "allegiances are not postmodern [because] he still believes that some, not other, truth-claims have some legitimacy. According to alternative interpretations of Okri's work, there is an allegiance to Yoruba folklore, New Ageism, spiritual realism, magical realism, visionary materialism, and existionism.

Okri has always opposed the categation of his work as magical realism, claiming that this classification is the result of laziness on the part of critics and likening this description to the statement that "a horse..." has four legs and a tail. That doesn't mean it's not descriptive." He has since described his story as following a kind of "dream logic," and has stated that his book is often preoccupied with the "philosophical conundrum," as "what is truth?"

insisting that:

"Beware of the tales you read or hear at night, they are changing your world," he says.

Okri's short fiction has been described as more realistic and less fantastic than his novels, but these stories also depict Africans in spirit with spirits, while his poetry and nonfiction have a more overt political tone, with the possibility of Africa and the world to solve modernity's challenges.

He was named an OBE for services to Literature in the 2001 Queen's Birthday Honours.

Okri was appointed honorary vice president of the English Centre for the International Book of Literature and a member of the Royal National Theatre board. Okri was named the Caine Prize for African Writing's new vice president on April 26, 2012, having served on the governing committee and associated with the award for 13 years.

Okri delivered the keynote address at the second Berlin African Book Festival in April 2019, curated by Tsitsi Dangarembga.

Source

Awards and honours

• 1987: Commonwealth Writers Prize (Africa Region, Best Book) – Incidents at the Shrine
• 1987: Aga Khan Prize for Fiction – The Dream Vendor's August
• 1988: Guardian Fiction Prize – Stars of the New Curfew (shortlisted)
• 1991–1993: Fellow Commoner in Creative Arts (FCCA), Trinity College, Cambridge
• 1991: Booker Prize – The Famished Road
• 1993: Chianti Ruffino-Antico Fattore International Literary Prize – The Famished Road
• 1994: Premio Grinzane Cavour (Italy) -The Famished Road
• 1995: Crystal Award (World Economic Forum)
• 1997: Honorary Doctorate of Literature, awarded by University of Westminster
• 1999: Premio Palmi (Italy) – Dangerous Love
• 2001: Order of the British Empire (OBE)
• 2002: Honorary Doctorate of Literature, awarded by University of Essex
• 2003: Chosen as one of 100 Great Black Britons
• 2004: Honorary Doctor of Literature, awarded by University of Exeter
• 2008: International Literary Award Novi Sad (International Novi Sad Literature Festival, Serbia)
• 2009: Honorary Doctorate of Utopia, awarded by Universiteit voor het Algemeen Belang, Belgium
• 2010: Honorary Doctorate, awarded by School of Oriental and African Studies
• 2010: Honorary Doctorate of Arts, awarded by the University of Bedfordshire
• 2014: Honorary Fellow, Mansfield College, Oxford
• 2014: Bad Sex in Fiction Award, Literary Review