Edited by Vanessa Guignery, Professor of contemporary English literature and postcolonial literature at ENS de Lyon. Published on March 2024 by University Press of Mississippi.
Vanessa Guignery (ed.). University Press of Mississippi, "Literary Conversations Series" series. March, 2024. 246 p.
Over three decades of interviews with the innovative Nigerian author and first Black African winner of the Booker Prize (1991).
Conversations with Ben Okri collects twenty-six interviews that range from 1986 to 2023 and reflect the international resonance of Nigerian writer Ben Okri's work. The volume offers insight into the writer’s creative process and his unique views on literature, history, memory, politics, freedom, spirituality, and environmental issues.
Since the publication of his first novel in 1980, Okri has encouraged his readers to open their minds and eyes to new modes of perceiving reality. Convinced of the universality of art, he has been intent on redreaming the world from a variety of perspectives in poems, essays, short stories, novels, and plays written over a period of more than forty years.
Throughout his career, Ben Okri has never stopped experimenting with new forms, creating the stoku (a mixture of short story and haiku), endowing his fictional and nonfictional creations with poetic undertones, and collaborating with visual artists, musicians, and dancers.