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Search Results for: Ben Okri

October 28, 2021

Ben Okri Joins Letters to the Earth Climate Campaign

The Booker Prize winner performs his letter in a video with his family, ahead of the United Nations Climate Conference (COP26). “It’s time,” he said, “to show that we human beings can be a great force for good on this planet.”
Emmanuel Esomnofu
Ben Okri, Mirabella Okri, and Charlotte Jarvis. Credit: Tania Hoser-min.

March 19, 2021

Ben Okri & Skepta Feature on Tony Allen’s “Cosmosis”

The Booker Prize winner appears on the first song off There Is No End, a posthumous album celebrating the late Afrobeat drummer.
Emmanuel Esomnofu
Tony Allen by Bernard Benant.

February 4, 2021

Ben Okri Says His New Yorker Short Story Was “Hijacked by History”

The Nigerian Booker Prize winner discussed the ideas of perception and illusion in “A Wrinkle in the Realm,” and how it connects to his story collection Prayer for the Living.
Paula Willie-Okafor
Ben Okri by Georgina Chapel Associates via Tank Magazine.

August 9, 2021

The Stories in Ben Okri’s Prayer for the Living Move between Reality and Myth

The book has been described as “playful, frightening, shocking,” one that “will make you think, or make you laugh.”
Paula Willie-Okafor
Ben Okri's Prayer for the Living.

April 2, 2021

TJ Benson Holds History and Hope

Thirteen years after he started it, his debut novel The Madhouse finally arrives. This chronicle of the ‘90s, set in northern Nigeria, broadens the familiar for the 29-year-old.
Ernest Ogunyemi
TJ Benson by Nelson Apocho.

January 14, 2025

Our Top Stories of 2024

From a groundbreaking Profile of Cardinal Arinze to a feature on Liberia’s lack of a literary bookstore, to the story of a novelist-cum-soldier: these stories of artists and industry shapers in African literature, Nollywood, and culture defined our year.
Otosirieze
Cardinal Arinze celebrates Pontifical High Mass in the Extraordinary Form for the Feast of Corpus Christi in London on June 20, 2019. Photo credit: Mazur/cbcew.org.uk.

March 25, 2024

“A Richness of African Consciousness”: How a Spiritual Novel Influenced a Music Album

Booker Prize winner Ben Okri, author of The Famished Road, and Ghanaian rapper Delasi, with the EP The Audacity of Free Thought, in a deep, rare reflection on storytelling, art forms, and their quests for origins.
Michael Chiedoziem Chukwudera
"I do not consider The Famished Road Trilogy as just books of fiction," says Delasi. Ben Okri (L) by Mat Bray. Delasi (R) by Charles Lawson.

December 13, 2023

How Leila Aboulela Reclaimed the Heroines of Sudan

The widest-read contemporary Sudanese writer is retrieving from history the stolen spaces of her country’s women, and bringing nuance to an image of Islam. In a time of war, her fiction expands a national consciousness.
Paula Willie-Okafor
Leila Aboulela by Judy Laing

February 13, 2023

“Friendship, to Me, Is What Saves One’s Sanity”: Wole Soyinka

In this excerpt from Sarah Ladipo Manyika’s Between Starshine and Clay, the Nobel laureate and his friend Henry Louis Gates, Jr. remember another friend: the late Toni Morrison.
Sarah Ladipo Manyika
Wole Soyinka. Credit: University of Oxford.

February 11, 2023

Anticipated Books of 2023

From Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Ben Okri, and Leila Aboulela to Sarah Ladipo Manyika and Ayobami Adebayo, here are the over 100 books expected to lead the literary conversation this year.
Open Country Mag
The Anticipated Books of 2023

February 15, 2025

Anticipated Books of 2025

From Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Laila Lalami, and Goretti Kyomuhendo to Tochi Eze, Chisom Okafor, Itiola Jones, and Adedayo Agarau: the anticipated books of 2025.
Orji Victor Ebubechukwu
Anticipated Books of 2025

August 17, 2023

“‘Our Literature Has Died Again’: Nigerian Writing in the Era of the Nomadists”

As conversations sethe about the “death” of Nigerian literature and the loss of authenticity in its poetry, a writer counters for the growing japa-MFA subculture: “I call them the Nomadic Generation because of their complication of nationalism.”
Kanyinsola Olorunnisola
Nigerian Literature and the Era of the Nomadists

February 10, 2022

Damon Galgut Is on the February 2022 Cover of Open Country Mag

In his 40th year as a writer, last year’s Booker Prize winner talks to Open Country Mag about his artistic process, and his novel The Promise.
Otosirieze
Open Country Mag Reissues Cover of Damon Galgut

February 7, 2022

Over 100 Writers Sign Open Letter on Missing Rwandan Poet Innocent Bahati

Ben Okri, J.M. Coetzee, Margaret Atwood, and Michael Ondaatje are among those urging Rwandan President Paul Kagame to intervene in the case.
Otosirieze
The poet Innocent Bahati has been missing in Rwanda for a year now.

December 29, 2021

60 Notable Books of 2021

From Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Bernardine Evaristo to Teju Cole, Damon Galgut, and Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, our first annual highlight of the top titles of the year by African writers.
Open Country Mag

November 3, 2021

Damon Galgut Takes Booker Prize for The Promise

The South African stylist, the fifth African to win, had previously been shortlisted twice. The judges called his winning ninth novel “a strong, unambiguous commentary on the history of South Africa and of humanity itself.”
Otosirieze
Author Damon Galgut at the 2021 Booker Prize Awards Ceremony in London, Wednesday Nov. 3, 2021. South African writer Damon Galgut wins the Booker Prize for fiction for “The Promise”. (David Parry/PA via AP)

July 27, 2021

The Booker Prize 2021 Longlist

Three Africans are in the running this year: Damon Galgut for The Promise, Nadifa Mohamed for The Fortune Men, and Karen Jennings for An Island.
Ernest Ogunyemi

June 25, 2021

Revel, Again, in the Beautiful Absurd

On how to joyfully read, and love, a poem: “If you are one of those who don’t get poetry, I have a song for you.”
Ernest Ogunyemi
Chapbooks from African Poetry Book Fund's box set Nne. Credit: Kimberly Ann Southwick. From blog.pshares.org.

October 28, 2021

Ben Okri, Mirabella Okri, and Charlotte Jarvis. Credit: Tania Hoser-min.

Ben Okri Joins Letters to the Earth Climate Campaign

The Booker Prize winner performs his letter in a video with his family, ahead of the United Nations Climate Conference (COP26). “It’s time,” he said, “to show that we human beings can be a great force for good on this planet.”
Emmanuel Esomnofu

March 19, 2021

Tony Allen by Bernard Benant.

Ben Okri & Skepta Feature on Tony Allen’s “Cosmosis”

The Booker Prize winner appears on the first song off There Is No End, a posthumous album celebrating the late Afrobeat drummer.
Emmanuel Esomnofu

February 4, 2021

Ben Okri by Georgina Chapel Associates via Tank Magazine.

Ben Okri Says His New Yorker Short Story Was “Hijacked by History”

The Nigerian Booker Prize winner discussed the ideas of perception and illusion in “A Wrinkle in the Realm,” and how it connects to his story collection Prayer for the Living.
Paula Willie-Okafor

August 9, 2021

Ben Okri's Prayer for the Living.

The Stories in Ben Okri’s Prayer for the Living Move between Reality and Myth

The book has been described as “playful, frightening, shocking,” one that “will make you think, or make you laugh.”
Paula Willie-Okafor

April 2, 2021

TJ Benson by Nelson Apocho.

TJ Benson Holds History and Hope

Thirteen years after he started it, his debut novel The Madhouse finally arrives. This chronicle of the ‘90s, set in northern Nigeria, broadens the familiar for the 29-year-old.
Ernest Ogunyemi

January 14, 2025

Cardinal Arinze celebrates Pontifical High Mass in the Extraordinary Form for the Feast of Corpus Christi in London on June 20, 2019. Photo credit: Mazur/cbcew.org.uk.

Our Top Stories of 2024

From a groundbreaking Profile of Cardinal Arinze to a feature on Liberia’s lack of a literary bookstore, to the story of a novelist-cum-soldier: these stories of artists and industry shapers in African literature, Nollywood, and culture defined our year.
Otosirieze

March 25, 2024

"I do not consider The Famished Road Trilogy as just books of fiction," says Delasi. Ben Okri (L) by Mat Bray. Delasi (R) by Charles Lawson.

“A Richness of African Consciousness”: How a Spiritual Novel Influenced a Music Album

Booker Prize winner Ben Okri, author of The Famished Road, and Ghanaian rapper Delasi, with the EP The Audacity of Free Thought, in a deep, rare reflection on storytelling, art forms, and their quests for origins.
Michael Chiedoziem Chukwudera

December 13, 2023

Leila Aboulela by Judy Laing

How Leila Aboulela Reclaimed the Heroines of Sudan

The widest-read contemporary Sudanese writer is retrieving from history the stolen spaces of her country’s women, and bringing nuance to an image of Islam. In a time of war, her fiction expands a national consciousness.
Paula Willie-Okafor

February 13, 2023

Wole Soyinka. Credit: University of Oxford.

“Friendship, to Me, Is What Saves One’s Sanity”: Wole Soyinka

In this excerpt from Sarah Ladipo Manyika’s Between Starshine and Clay, the Nobel laureate and his friend Henry Louis Gates, Jr. remember another friend: the late Toni Morrison.
Sarah Ladipo Manyika

February 11, 2023

The Anticipated Books of 2023

Anticipated Books of 2023

From Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Ben Okri, and Leila Aboulela to Sarah Ladipo Manyika and Ayobami Adebayo, here are the over 100 books expected to lead the literary conversation this year.
Open Country Mag

February 15, 2025

Anticipated Books of 2025

Anticipated Books of 2025

From Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Laila Lalami, and Goretti Kyomuhendo to Tochi Eze, Chisom Okafor, Itiola Jones, and Adedayo Agarau: the anticipated books of 2025.
Orji Victor Ebubechukwu

August 17, 2023

Nigerian Literature and the Era of the Nomadists

“‘Our Literature Has Died Again’: Nigerian Writing in the Era of the Nomadists”

As conversations sethe about the “death” of Nigerian literature and the loss of authenticity in its poetry, a writer counters for the growing japa-MFA subculture: “I call them the Nomadic Generation because of their complication of nationalism.”
Kanyinsola Olorunnisola

February 10, 2022

Open Country Mag Reissues Cover of Damon Galgut

Damon Galgut Is on the February 2022 Cover of Open Country Mag

In his 40th year as a writer, last year’s Booker Prize winner talks to Open Country Mag about his artistic process, and his novel The Promise.
Otosirieze

February 7, 2022

The poet Innocent Bahati has been missing in Rwanda for a year now.

Over 100 Writers Sign Open Letter on Missing Rwandan Poet Innocent Bahati

Ben Okri, J.M. Coetzee, Margaret Atwood, and Michael Ondaatje are among those urging Rwandan President Paul Kagame to intervene in the case.
Otosirieze

December 29, 2021

60 Notable Books of 2021

From Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Bernardine Evaristo to Teju Cole, Damon Galgut, and Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, our first annual highlight of the top titles of the year by African writers.
Open Country Mag

November 3, 2021

Author Damon Galgut at the 2021 Booker Prize Awards Ceremony in London, Wednesday Nov. 3, 2021. South African writer Damon Galgut wins the Booker Prize for fiction for “The Promise”. (David Parry/PA via AP)

Damon Galgut Takes Booker Prize for The Promise

The South African stylist, the fifth African to win, had previously been shortlisted twice. The judges called his winning ninth novel “a strong, unambiguous commentary on the history of South Africa and of humanity itself.”
Otosirieze

July 27, 2021

The Booker Prize 2021 Longlist

Three Africans are in the running this year: Damon Galgut for The Promise, Nadifa Mohamed for The Fortune Men, and Karen Jennings for An Island.
Ernest Ogunyemi

June 25, 2021

Chapbooks from African Poetry Book Fund's box set Nne. Credit: Kimberly Ann Southwick. From blog.pshares.org.

Revel, Again, in the Beautiful Absurd

On how to joyfully read, and love, a poem: “If you are one of those who don’t get poetry, I have a song for you.”
Ernest Ogunyemi

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