Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
Actually, this is the second manifestation of this particular story. He first wrote this story under the title Landscapes Within, his second novel, in 1981. Then he rewrote it as Dangerous Love in the 1990s after he had won the Booker Prize. He said after the first version he continued to feel haunted by the story, by the feeling that the book wasn’t complete. And I think he actually manages to complete the story with this book.
Ben Okri is next up on your list with Dangerous Love.
Actually, this is the second manifestation of this particular story. He first wrote this story under the title Landscapes Within, his second novel, in 1981. Then he rewrote it as Dangerous Love in the 1990s after he had won the Booker Prize. He said after the first version he continued to feel haunted by the story, by the feeling that the book wasn’t complete. And I think he actually manages to complete the story with this book.
It is the story of a young painter, Omovo, who lives in a compound in Nigeria. He is trying to make sense of the environment around him, the oppression, poverty and corruption. His father is a very harsh man, who is feeling emasculated by his current wife. Omovo is in love with his neighbour’s young wife. So all this is going on in this novel and Okri handles it brilliantly. The main story is about Omovo’s escape through his art, his painting. Through this he is able to express his inner protest. He is very young and during the book you see his growing consciousness about what is going on around him. As the name of the first version suggests, it is a book about exploring one’s inner landscape, about refection, about bringing order to the daily chaos around. The setting is the 1970s, just after the Nigerian civil war, so you have that militaristic echo, a feeling of violence in the air, forming a backdrop of oppression and violence which is threatening to Omovo’s art. Okri describes it all beautifully, suggestively, through vivid imagery and metaphors.
Okri is amongst a group of exceptional writers that have come out of Nigeria. What do you think it is about Nigeria that inspires such great novels?
Well, Nigeria has a tradition of storytelling. People grow up listening to stories for entertainment. Before we were over taken by TV and video games it was very much part of our culture to tell stories. And this tradition still persists on the streets… you will see people spend hours just talking to each other! In everything they do there is a sense of performance and I think you grow up with that mentality, so lots of people go on to become writers. And, of course, extraordinary things also happen, so you have lots of material. But all this wouldn’t produce writers if you don’t have that sense of wonder, a way of looking at the world and trying to make sense of it by arranging it into a story.
As for Ben Okri, the reason I think he stands out is his ability to give you direct access to the innermost feelings of his characters – he cares about them, he understands them, and he is able to make you see that. It is a rare talent. It comes across so clearly in his stories.
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Helon Habila was born in Nigeria in 1967. His first novel, Waiting for an Angel, won the Caine Prize in 2001. In 2002 he moved to England to become the African Writing Fellow at the University of East Anglia. His writing has won many prizes including the Commonwealth Writers Prize, 2003. In 2005-2006 he was the first Chinua Achebe Fellow at Bard College in New York. He is contributing editor to the Virginia Quarterly Review and in 2006 co-edited the British Council’s anthology, New Writing 14. His second novel, Measuring Time was published in February 2007 and his latest novel, Oil on Water, is out soon. He currently teaches creative writing at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, where he lives with his wife and children. He says Nigeria has a tradition of storytelling. ‘Before we were over taken by TV and video games it was very much part of our culture to tell stories. And this tradition still persists on the streets… you will see people spend hours just talking to each other!’
