Booker Prize-Winning Author Ben Okri Returns

Booker Prize winning author Ben Okri has just released his "Letter To The Earth"

Photo: Ben Okri

Booker Prize winning author Ben Okri has just released his “Letter To The Earth” and will be releasing two new upcoming book releases “Every Leaf A Hallelujah” (Other Press Hardcover; On-Sale: February 15, 2022) and reissue of “Astonishing The Gods”: A Novel” (Other Press Paperback; On-Sale: February 15, 2022).

Okri’s “Letter To The Earth” is performed with Charlotte Jarvis and Mirabella Okri.

Okri’s imaginative environmental fable, Every Leaf Is A Hallelujah is a timely tale. This wonder-filled adventure story, echoing climate activist Greta Thunberg’s message that “no one is too small to make a difference,” follows a seven-year-old girl named Mangoshi as she journeys into a forest to retrieve a flower to cure her mother’s illness. In signature Okri-style, Every Leaf A Hallelujah exudes a shape-shifting quality, operating on many planes at once, delivering a transcendent message in an allegoric tale. Accompanied by Italian-Nigerian artist Diana Ejaita’s gorgeous, vibrant illustrations of flora, Every Leaf A Hallelujah weds the power of Okri’s mystic vision to a story that weaves wonder, adventure, and environmentalism, offering cross-over appeal for readers of all ages.

MORE ABOUT EVERY LEAF A HALLELUJAH & ASTONISHING THE GODS

The release of these titles heralds a major new partnership between the famed poet, playwright, and novelist and Other Press. This publishing partnership will include the forthcoming publications of original content from Okri, coupled and published simultaneously with reissues from Okri’s deep catalog. This new union is a welcome development for Okri acolytes, marking the reintroduction of this seminal voice; for neophytes, it serves as a compelling introduction to a complex, timely, enduring literary figure.

Known for his unique creative process oriented around revisiting, rewriting and revising past projects, Okri is perpetually in dialog with his previous and future texts. Originally released in 1995 and named one of the BBC’s “100 Novels That Shaped Our World,” AstonishingThe Gods is a genre-bending, imaginative allegory, in the spirit of Lesley Nneka Arimah’s collection What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky, about finding one’s purpose. This coming edition includes a new introduction penned by Okri, that decades after the original publication, contemplates the shifting nature of meaning over time and the resonance of the questions this critically acclaimed novel set out to address. As Okri reminds in his new introduction, “it is only by reading it in a new way that the real narrative can be grasped…” Told with kaleidoscopic whimsy, Astonishing The Gods centers on an invisible man who finds himself in a strange city among other invisible beings; a utopia based on one principle: that we must repeat or suffer every experience until we experience it properly and fully for the first time. As he explores his new surroundings—a world whose ornate architecture and unspoken rules bend and shift with every trick of the light—he aims to uncover the meaning of his existence.

About Author Ben Okri:

Ben Okri is a poet, playwright and novelist. He has published many books, including The Famished Road, which won the Booker Prize for Fiction in 1991. His other novels include Starbook, The Age Of Magic, Dangerous Love, and Astonishing The Gods. He has published eleven novels, four books of Short Stories, two collections of essays, and three volumes of poems. He has invented a new form of storytelling called the “Stoku”, which is a cross between the short story and the haiku. His works have been translated into 27 languages. He has been a Fellow Commoner in Creative Arts at Trinity College, Cambridge and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He was awarded an OBE.

Ben Okri’s books have won numerous international Prizes including the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize for Africa, the Paris Review Aga Khan Prize for Fiction, the Chianti Ruffino-Antico Fattore International Literary Prize, and the Premio Grinzane Cavour Prize. The recipient of many honorary doctorates, he is a vice-president of the English Centre of International PEN and was presented the Crystal Award by the World Economic Forum for his outstanding contribution to the Arts and to cross-cultural understanding.

He wrote the script for Peter Krüger’s film N: The Madness Of Reason, which won the 2015 Ensor Award for Best Film. He wrote a much acclaimed adaptation of Camus’s ‘The Outsider’ for The Coronet, in London in 2018, which won The Offies Award for Best Theatre Production. In 2020, his play, ‘Madame Sosotris,’ was performed to full houses at the Pulloff Theatres in Lausanne, Switzerland. In 2019 his novel, Astonishing The Gods, was selected as one of the BBC’s ‘100 novels that shaped our world.’ His most recent books are The Freedom Artist and a volume of short stories, ‘Prayer for the Living.’ His latest book of poems, A Fire In My Head, was published in January 2021. He is an honorary Fellow of Mansfield College, Oxford. He was born in Nigeria, and lives in London. A

bout Illustrator Diana Ejaita: Diana Ejaita works as an illustrator and textile designer in Berlin. Born in Cremona, Italy, and of Nigerian origins, her aesthetic pays homage to her lineage.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *