BEN OKRI Author

Ben Okri was born in 1959 in Lagos, Nigeria.
Though he has said his childhood significantly influenced his writing, he does say that the constant presence of the civil war in Nigeria in his youth and the experience of his secondary schooling 400 miles from his family were strong influences on him. However he does not give details about that time as he believes it is best explored in his writing.

Ben Okri now lives and works in London and describes London as the "home of literature" although his writing is considered very African, his literary influences are Shakespeare, Dickens, Ibsen, Tolstoy, Mark Twain and the Greek legends. Okri writes completely in English, but had completed his first novel Flowers and Shadows before he moved to England to study at the University of Essex.

In 1991 he won the Booker prize for his novel The Famished Road which draws on the Nigerian belief in "spirit children" who die and are reborn constantly. It tells the story of a spirit child called Azaro and moves easily between the real world and that of the spirits.

When he left university he worked as a BBC broadcaster and as poetry editor of West Africa magazine.

His novels include The Landscapes Within (1981) and Dangerous Love (1996).

Okri has also published two collections of short stories, Incidents at the Shrine (1986) and Stars of the New Curfew (1988), and a collection of poems, An African Elegy (1992).
Mental Fight (1999)
He wrote a poem for the millennium called The Awakening Age.

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We must not think ourselves victims,
Disadvantaged, held back-
Because of race, colour , creed,
Education, class, gender,
Religion, height, or age.
The world is not made of labels.
the world from now on,
Will be made through the mind.
Through great dreaming, great loving
And masterly application.
Those who transcend their apparent limitations
Are greater than those who apparently
Have little to transcend.
Our handicaps can be the seed of our glories.
We shouldn't deny them.
we should embrace them,
Embrace our marginalisation,
Our invisibility, our powerlessness.
Embrace our handicaps, and use them,
And go beyond them,
For they could well be the key
To some of the most beautiful energies
That we have been given.
Accept no limitations to our human potential.
We have the power of solar systems
In our minds.
Our rage is powerful.
Our love is mighty.
Our desire to survive is awesome.
our quest for freedom is noble, and great.
And just as astonishing is the knowledge
That we are, more or less,
The makers of the future.
We create what time will frame.
And a beautiful dream, shaped
And realised by a beautiful mind,
Is one of the greatest gifts
We can make to our fellow beings.

Mental Fight- extract
"No One Is A Loser" Ben Okri

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