Ben Okri: An Introduction By Daria Tunca Ben Okri was born on 15 March 1959 in Minna, Nigeria, to an Igbo mother,

Grace, and an Urhobo father, Silver. Okri's father, then a railway station clerk, soon left for England to study law. The rest of the family joined him shortly afterwards. Despite young Ben's protestations, the Okris returned to Lagos in 1965, where Silver Okri set up a law practice. While Ben Okri seldom reveals details about his childhood (unless perhaps his early memories of the Civil War), saying he'd "rather reserve that for the complex manipulations of memory that only fiction can provide" (Wilkinson 1992:77), he has extensively commented on his literary influences. They range from the African tales and legends his parents used to tell him to the European authors whose works he found in his father's library: Aristotle, Plato, Shakespeare, Dickens, Twain, Ibsen, Chekhov and Maupassant, among others. This double heritage, the intermingling of African myths and European sources, and the later influence of contemporary African writers, were to become major inspirations for Ben Okri's work. Okri began writing articles and fiction in 1976, after failing to get a place at a university in Nigeria. He wrote a play and a novel while working in a paint company, and then moved to England, first to study comparative literature at the University of Essex, then to continue writing in London. His first novel, Flowers and Shadows, was published by Longman in 1980, and features a teenager's disillusionment with Nigeria's corrupt society, which, as he discovers, his own father is a part of. The story is, Okri insists, "not autobiographical at all" (Wilkinson 1992:79); unlike, perhaps, The Landscapes Within (1981), whose main character, Omovo, is a young painter living in Lagos. This novel, which Okri was later to re-write under the title Dangerous Love (1996), may be considered an early artistic manifesto, for Omovo's approach to art seems in many ways to reflect the author's views on language and creation, as expressed later in the collection of essays A Way of Being Free (1997). The Landscapes Within, as well as some of the short stories contained in Incidents at the Shrine (1986) and Stars of the New Curfew (1988), read as tales of a country, Nigeria, struggling with poverty, corruption, and sometimes war. These thematic interests were further developed in The Famished Road (1991), for which Okri won the Booker Prize. Based on the Yoruba myth of the abiku (the spirit-child who is born, dies and is reincarnated endlessly), the novel is told from the perspective of Azaro, a spirit-child who has decided to stay on earth. Throughout the book, the constant interaction between "reality" and the spirit world reminds one of African folktales as well as twentieth-century narratives inspired by the oral tradition, such as Amos Tutuola's. Ultimately, the myth of the abiku, who is infinitely dying and reborn, is intended as a symbol for the Nigerian nation. In 1993, The Famished Road was followed by a sequel (a "continuation of the dream", as Okri puts it [Mitchell 1994]), Songs of Enchantment; the abiku trilogy was later completed by Infinite Riches (1998). In his 2002 novel In Arcadia, Okri turns to a European myth and describes a film crew's journey from England to Arcadia. Once again, art, if only through the multiple references to Poussin's Les Bergers d'Arcadie, figures as a central motif that allows the novelist to explore profound themes such as man's everlasting quest for happiness. The key role played by art and the imagination in the understanding and reshaping of the world is also explored in Starbook (2007), a fairytale-like allegory set in Africa during the early days of the transatlantic slave trade, and in Tales of Freedom (2009), a book that includes hybrid tales which Okri calls "stokus" - combining features of the short story and the haiku.

Sources

'Ben Okri', Interview by Edward Blishen, ICA Guardian Conversations, 1988. Video file. Fraser, Robert, 'Ben Okri (1959 - )', Literary Encyclopedia, 30 March 2011. Mathys, Kathy, 'Ben Okri: "Shakespeare is voor mij een Afrikaans schrijver"', Standaard: Letteren, 25 September 2003, pp. 8-9. Mitchell, Elizabeth, 'And the Road Goes on Forever', 1994. [no longer online] Moh, Felicia Oka, Ben Okri: An Introduction to his Early Fiction (Enugu: Fourth Dimension Publishers, 2001). Wilkinson, Jane, 'Ben Okri', Talking with African Writers (London & Porthsmouth: James Currey & Heinemann, 1992), pp. 76-89.

An African Elegy We are the miracles that God made To taste the bitter fruit of Time. We are precious. And one day our suffering Will turn into the wonders of the earth. There are things that burn me now Which turn golden when I am happy. Do you see the mystery of our pain? That we bear the poverty And are able to sing and dream sweet things. And that we never curse the air when it is warm Or the fruit when it tastes so good Or the lights that bounce gently on the waters? We bless the things even in our pain. We bless them in silence. That is why our music is so sweet. It makes the air remember. There are secret miracles at work That only Time will bring forth. I too have heard the dead singing. And they tell me that This life is good They tell me to live it gently With fire, and always with hope. There is wonder here

And there is surprise In everything the unseen moves. The ocean is full of songs. The sky is not an enemy. Destiny is our friend.

On Edge of Time Future I remember the history well: The soldiers and politicians emerged With briefcases and guns And celebrations on city nights. They scoured the mess Reviewed our history Saw the executions at dawn Then signed with secret policemen And decided something Had to be done. They scoured the mess Resurrected old blue-prints Of vicious times Tracked the shapes of sinking cities And learned at last That nothing can be avoided And so avoided everything. I remember the history well. We emerged from our rubbish mounds Discovered a view of the sky As the air danced in heat. Through the view of the city In flames, we rewound times Of executions at beaches. Salt streamed down our brows.

Everywhere stagger victims of rigged elections Monolithic accidents on hungry roads The infinite web of ethnic politics Power-dreams of fevered winds. The nation was a map stitched From the grabbing of future flesh And became a rush through Historical slime We emerged on edge Of time future With bright fumes From burning towers. The fumes lit political rallies. We started a war Ended it And dreamed about our chance. Fat fish eat little fish Big ones arrange executions And armed robberies. Our rubbish shapes us all. I remember the history well. The tigers snarl is bought In currencies of silence. Eggs grow large: A monstrous face is hatched. On the edge of time future I am a boy With running sores Of remember history Watching the stitches widen Waiting for the volcanos laughter

In the fevered winds Hearing the gnash Of those who will join us At the mighty gateways With new blue-prints With dew as seal And fire as constant And a trail through time past To us Who remember the history well. We weave words on red And sing on the edge of blue. And with our nerves primed We shall spin silk from rubbish And frame time with our resolve. We sing absurdities On the face Of anguish And enact cameos Within the eye's Vision. We sing of absurdities-Arabesques of bodies Entangled In the dissolutions And vapours Of power: Victims of seepages And batterings from above. We sing absurdities When all else sinks in shallows. Word-acids dissolve Ordinary chaos: Within the eye A potent chemistry

Unmasks the faces Beneath the terrors And fills the silences Of anguished journeys. Dreams live serenely In our singing And our eyes. We sing absurdities When all else sinks in shallows.