Isidore Chukwudozi Oghenerhuele Okpewho is the best example in Africa of the writer who combines steadfast commitment to scholarship with a deep devotion to art, especially the art of fictional narrative, which he has taken up and made his creative triumph. His praise of J. R. R. Tolkien in A Portrait of the Artist as a Scholar: An Inaugural Lecture (1990) also applies to Okpewho himself, for in both men "the scholar and the artist enjoy fruitful coexistence." He is an outstanding scholar of African oral traditions, a classicist grounded in comparative literature and comparative folklore, as well as being the most adventurous of the second generation of African novelists who successfully experiment with diverse forms and techniques.

His work is important because of its high quality and the contribution that it makes to the variety, dynamism, and vitality of African creative literature. It shows what can be achieved...