Ben Okri
Ben Okri was born in 1959 in Minna, northern Nigeria, to an Igbo mother and Urhobo father.
He spent formative years between London and Nigeria, witnessing the Nigerian civil war firsthand, which shaped his early fiction.
After studying Comparative Literature at Essex University, he worked as poetry editor for West Africa magazine and broadcast for the BBC. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he won the 1991 Booker Prize for The Famished Road, the first of his Abiku Trilogy.
His prolific output spans novels, poetry, essays, and plays, and he was awarded an OBE in 2001.
