The youngest Nigerian writer to have written and published a full-length novel, Ben Okri is the first Nigerian author to succeed as a full-time writer, the first to have won the Booker Prize, and the first to have chosen the path of self-expatriation. Okri's status as a pioneer combined with the themes of his fiction and the techniques he employs in their exploration have made him a unique figure in contemporary Nigerian literature. His relentless focus on the socio-economic landscape of postindependence and post--civil war Nigeria and its impingement on the lives and circumstances of individuals caught in this historical cauldron place him solidly within the second generation of Nigerian novelists. Even though the manner in which he explores these issues has sometimes become a matter of contention among his peers, there is, nonetheless, little doubt about the importance of his contribution to the development of the contemporary...