本·奥克瑞

Ben Okri

思想与学术文学非洲 20 世纪

生卒: 1959 年 3 月 15 日
出生地: 明纳
国籍 / 所属: 英国、尼日利亚
身份: 作家、诗人、作者、新闻工作者、小说家、文学学者
代表作: 饥饿的路、Starbook、Songs of Enchantment、Every Leaf a Hallelujah
受影响于: 弗朗西斯·培根、威廉·布莱克、塞缪尔·泰勒·柯勒律治
就读: 埃塞克斯大学
所属组织: 国际笔会、皇家国立剧场、中央演讲和戏剧学院、皇家文学学会
领域: 表演艺术
简述: Nigerian-born British poet and novelist (1959-)

本·奥克瑞爵士，OBE（Sir Ben Okri；1959年3月15日—），尼日利亚诗人及小说家。

详细介绍

生平

出生于明纳，早年在伦敦度过，1968年随家人返回尼日利亚。后来又回到英国，在艾赛克斯大学从事研究工作。1997年和2002年分别成为威斯敏斯特大学和艾赛克斯大学的荣誉博士，2001年获大英帝国勋章。

1980年出版的首部小说《花与影》令奥克瑞获得了国际声誉。他最著名的作品《饥饿的路》获得1991年布克奖。此外，他还获得英联邦作家奖、阿加汗小说奖、以及世界经济论坛水晶奖。他还是英国皇家文学会成员。

他常被认为是魔幻现实主义者，虽然他自己反对这种说法。他在尼日利亚内战中的亲身经历成为他许多作品的灵感。他的作品既平常又玄妙，既独特又有共通性。

作品在台湾的出版

王维东/译，《饥饿之路》，大块文化出版，2004年。

作品在中国的出版

王维东/译，《饥饿的路》，南京市译林出版社，2002年。

正文摘自中文维基百科「本·奥克瑞」（删去了参考文献、表格和图片），按 CC BY-SA 4.0 使用

英文维基百科的更多内容

中文维基百科这一条比较短，下面是英文维基百科同一条目的节选，原文为英文，未翻译。

Sir Ben Golden Emuobowho Okri (born 15 March 1959) is a Nigerian-born British poet and novelist. Considered one of the foremost African authors in the postmodern and post-colonial traditions, Okri has been compared to authors such as Salman Rushdie and Gabriel García Márquez. In 1991, his novel The Famished Road won the Booker Prize. Okri was knighted at the 2023 Birthday Honours for services to literature.

Biography

Early years and education

Ben Okri is a member of the Urhobo people; his father was Urhobo, and his mother was half-Igbo ("from a royal family"). He was born in Minna in west central Nigeria to Grace and Silver Okri in 1959. His father, Silver, moved his family to London, England, when Okri was less than two years old so that he could study law. Okri thus spent his earliest years in London and attended primary school in Peckham. In 1966, Silver moved his family back to Nigeria, where he practised law in Lagos, providing free or discounted services for those who could not afford it.……

Move to England, 1978

In 1978, he moved back to England and studied comparative literature at Essex University with a grant from the Nigerian government.……

Literary career

Since the 1980 publication of Flowers and Shadows, Okri has risen to international acclaim, and he often is described as one of Africa's leading writers.

His best known work, The Famished Road, which won the 1991 Booker Prize, along with Songs of Enchantment (1993) and Infinite Riches (1998) make up a trilogy that follows Azaro, a spirit-child narrator, through the social and political turmoil of an African nation reminiscent of Okri's remembrance of war-torn Nigeria.

Okri's work is particularly difficult to categorise. It has been widely called postmodern, but some scholars have noted that the seeming realism with which he depicts the spirit-world challenges this categorisation.……

Influences

Okri has described his work as influenced as much by the philosophical texts on his father's bookshelves as by literature, and cites the influence of Francis Bacon and Michel de Montaigne on his A Time for New Dreams. His literary influences include Aesop's Fables, Arabian Nights, Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Okri's 1999 epic poem, Mental Fight, is named after a quotation from the poet William Blake's "And did those feet ...", and critics have noted a close relationship between Blake and Okri's poetry.