The Tough Alchemy of Ben Okri

Abstract

Ben Okri has a unique relationship to Nelson Mandela University, the institution where I am based. A few months before finishing this review, during the summer graduation of 2020, he was awarded an honorary doctorate. This is by no means his first. In fact, it is his eighth, and his second African one, the first having been awarded by the University of Pretoria on Professor Rosemary Gray’s nomination in 2014. Considering this, together with his long list of literary awards, including the Commonwealth Writers Prize, the Guardian Fiction Prize, and the Booker Prize, and his being conferred the class Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (OBE), it is strange that Rosemary Gray’s The Tough Alchemy of Ben Okri is the first monograph solely devoted to his work. Yet, whilst it is a notable hiatus, there is perhaps no better author to present what will hopefully be the first of many book-length studies devoted to Okri’s oeuvre.