Having won the Booker at a young age of 33, for The Fam -ished Road, Okri stands tall in the literary firmament with two fellow Nigerians—the 1986 Nobel Prize Winner for Literature, Wole Soyinka, 62, and Chinua Achebe, 66, who won the Commonwealth Poetry prize in 1972.
Says the author, sliding into his favourite sofa in a book-stacked bachelor home: "The Nigeria that I had depicted in The Landscapes Within when I was just 21 years , was very close to me then and has continued to haunt and traumatise me over the years, because in it's spirit and essence I sensed that it was incomplete." His new novel is a take-off from that tale written 17 years ago and is again tipped to win a Booker at least.
Dangerous Love centres around the life of Omovo, an artist, who falls hopelessly in love with a Ifeyiwa, a brave woman trapped in a loveless marriage with an abusive husband. In the end, Omovo is beaten to pulp by a gang of men and eventually loses her as she dies a mysterious death.
Smelling of a shanty town near Nigeria's crime-ridden capital Lagos, Minna's dirt, hunger, oppression and violence are reflected in his tenth novel. It has a strong, underlying message about political ineptitude and moral bankruptcy among Nigerian leaders. The strong political strand is another manifestation of Okri's well-publicised battles against Nigeria's regime for greater political freedom for his countrymen.
So delicate is his relationship with the powers in his homeland that Okri prefers to live in London where he maintains there is "intellectual freedom to express yourself". The execution in November 1995 of Okri's colleague, Nigerian writer Ken Saro-Wiwa, for campaigning against the government, is a frightening reminder of why Okri may have been forced to take British citizenship.
When he won the Booker in 1991, Okri dedicated his work to "all those who struggle and suffer in silence...who never stop fighting and always keep on dreaming".
For Dangerous Love, he desists from using the world of spirit that have marked most of his spectacular literary harvests Astonishing The Gods, The Famished Road and Incidents At a Shrine—and, instead, adopts nightmares to tell the story.
His life as a boy in the '70s in Minna still haunts him: "I remember seeing fathers of my friends, mothers and sisters being dragged away and beaten up; young men being killed and thrown into the river." What was it like coming to London? Okri admits it wasn't easy. He first visited the UK when he was five or six years old and has mixed memories: "I remember the first girlfriend I had was an Indian and I have a special place in my heart for India." Okri returned to the UK several years later to study at the University of Sussex where he pursued a degree in Comparative Literature. By this time he had published his first novel, Flowers and Shadows.
And though there were distasteful incidents due to his origins, living in London had its rewards. "Because of a certain level of social contact and structure, books are published, distributed and read. Not so in Nigeria. So, with all the intellectual exchange, is there a better understanding among peoples? Says Okri: "Racism has got better and worse. A whole new generation is assuming that racial discrimination is just not on. They (the Whites) are afraid of immigrants. They are fearful and suspicious. Racism has not turned the corner yet, though we seem to be getting on a little better with one another."
But the author is hopeful that publishing will help bridge the void among people: "It's important to remember that what used to be a civilising influence on society has now become commercialised. This beautiful invasion of publishing is a very good thing. The way Indians and Africans have entered the great ring of literature, language, imagination and allowed people to marvel and enjoy different experiences from the remotest villages, has brought people closer. It has challenged the heliocentric view of the universe—suddenly we have discovered many suns, many moons, many universes. Publishing has also brought intimacy between totally unconnected people."
Often teased by peers for his fear of flying, Okri says nothing will stop him from visiting India later this year. "Remember, my first girlfriend was Indian. And I am promised to India in 1996."
