Ben Okri is a Nigerian-born author known for juxtaposing incisive social critique and African mythological tradition. His Booker Prize-winning third novel, The Famished Road, exemplifies this duality through its narrator, Azaro, a boy with one foot in the world of modern Nigeria and one foot in the spirit world. Though Okri’s novel features Yoruba characters, he is not Yoruba himself but belongs to the Urhobo, another of the more than 200 ethnic groups that make up the Nigerian populace. Born in Minna, Nigeria, in 1959, Okri moved with his family the following year to England. His father studied law there, then returned to Nigeria and served as a lawyer for the inhabitants of Ajegunle, a slum district in Lagos. Ben Okri gained an intimate knowledge there of the complaints of the poor and how they fared in Nigeria’s justice system, which would profoundly affect his work. He returned to England to attend university and has lived there ever since, though focusing on Africa in his writing. In 1993 Okri followed The Famished Road with a sequel, Songs of Enchantment, in which the adventures of Azaro continue.
From colony to nation.
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