AFRICAN WRITERS/AUTHORS

AND OTHER NOTABLE

PEOPLE
MR. HERALD G. CARIÑO
BEN OKRI

• Ben Okri was born on 15 March 1959 in Minna,

Nigeria, to an Igbo mother, Grace, and an Urhobo
father, Silver. Okri's father, then a railway station
clerk, soon left for England to study law. The rest
of the family joined him shortly afterwards.
Despite young Ben's protestations, the Okris
returned to Lagos in 1965, where Silver Okri set
up a law practice..
BEN OKRI

POET, NOVELIST, ARTIST NOTABLE WORKS

• Ben Okri is a poet, novelist, essayist, • The Famished Road (1991),
short story writer, anthologist, aphorist, • A Way of Being Free (1997), 
and playwright. He has also written film
• Starbook (2007),
scripts. His works have won numerous
national and international prizes, •  A Time for New Dreams (2011)
including the Booker Prize for Fiction.
THE • The Famished Road won the Booker Prize that year. It was the
first Booker Prize winner to go straight to number one in the
FAMISHED paperback bestseller lists. The novel has been highly influential
ROAD in the decades since its release. When President Clinton went to
Africa for the first time, he quoted extensively from The
Famished Road. The novel was also the inspiration behind
‘Street Spirit’ by Radiohead. Recently it was one of the novels
cited in an episode of American Dad. It has inspired paintings,
music, classical music, plays, films, and dances. It has now been
re-issued as a Vintage Classic.
• ‘The Famished Road’ is the first book in The Famished Road
Trilogy, which included ‘Songs of Enchantment’ and ‘Infinite
Riches.’ Since then there have been many novels, books of
poems, collections of essays.
DJIBRIL NIANE

• Djibril Tamsir Niane, (born Jan. 9, 1932,

Conakry, Guinea), African historian, playwright,
and short-story writer.
DJIBRIL NIANE

• He is noted for introducing the Epic of Sundiata, about Sundiata Keita (ca 1217-1255),
founder of the Mali Empire, to the Western world in 1960 by translating the story told to
him by Djeli Mamoudou Kouyate, a griot or traditional oral historian. He also edited
Volume IV —Africa from the Twelfth to the Sixteenth Century— of the
UNESCO General History of Africa and did other UNESCO projects. He was the father
of model Katoucha Niane, (1960–2008).
• Niane’s first scholarly work, Recherches sur l’empire du Mali (1959; “Studies of the
Empire of Mali”), was followed by Histoire de l’Afrique occidentale (1961; “History of
Western Africa”), coauthored with Jean Suret-Canale. His novel Soundjata ou l’épopée
mandingue (1960; Sundiata: An Epic of Old Mali) is a highly successful re-creation of
the life and times of the illustrious 13th-century founder of the Mali empire, recounted in
the voice of a tribal storyteller. His other works include a collection of short stories, Mery
(1975), and two historical plays, Sikasso and Chaka.
 The epic of Sundiata is told by the griot
(storyteller and keeper of history) Djeli
Mamadou Kouyaté. He begins with details of
Sundiata's ancestors, as the force of history is
important in the tale of the man whose victory
SUNDIATA: AN will create the Mali Empire.
EPIC OF OLD
MALI The griot ends the epic by praising Sundiata
and his rule of the golden age of the Mali
Empire. He tells the audience that Mali is
eternal and that reminders of history are
everywhere, but only the griot can know all.
• Elechi Amadi, (born May 12, 1934, Aluu, near
Port Harcourt, Nigeria—died June 29, 2016, Port
Harcourt), Nigerian novelist and playwright best
known for works that explore traditional life and
the role of the supernatural in rural Nigeria.
• Amadi was best known, however, for his historical trilogy about
traditional life in Nigerian villages: The Concubine (1966), The
Great Ponds (1969), and The Slave (1978). These novels
concern human destiny and the extent to which it can be
changed; the relationship between people and their gods is the
central issue explored. 
 • THE LITERARY WORK
• A novel set in a remote Nigerian village at an
unspecified mythical time; published in English
THE in 1966.

CONCUBINE • SYNOPSIS
• A beautiful, virtuous woman unwittingly brings
death and destruction to all men who desire her.
 WOLE SOYINKA

• Wole Soyinka is a Nigerian playwright, poet, author, teacher and

political activist. In 1986, he became the first African to receive the
Nobel Prize for Literature.
• Wole Soyinka was born on 13 July 1934 at Abeokuta, near Ibadan in
western Nigeria. 
• During the civil war in Nigeria, Soyinka appealed in an article for
cease-fire. For this he was arrested in 1967, accused of conspiring with
the Biafra rebels, and was held as a political prisoner for 22 months
until 1969.
• Soyinka has published about 20 works: drama, novels and poetry. He
writes in English and his literary language is marked by great scope and
richness of words.
NOTABLE WORKS

• Soyinka has written two novels, The Interpreters (1965), narratively, a complicated work
which has been compared to Joyce’s and Faulkner’s, in which six Nigerian intellectuals
discuss and interpret their African experiences, and Season of Anomy (1973) which is
based on the writer’s thoughts during his imprisonment and confronts the Orpheus and
Euridice myth with the mythology of the Yoruba.
• Purely autobiographical are The Man Died: Prison Notes (1972) and the account of his
childhood, Aké ( 1981), in which the parents’ warmth and interest in their son are
prominent. Literary essays are collected in, among others, Myth, Literature and the African
World (1975).
• Soyinka’s poems, which show a close connection to his
plays, are collected in Idanre, and Other Poems (1967),
Poems from Prison (1969), A Shuttle in the Crypt
(1972) the long poem Ogun Abibiman (1976) and
Mandela’s Earth and Other Poems (1988).
THE INTERPRETERS

• The Interpreters is a 1965 novel by Wole Soyinka set in Nigeria

in the wake of its independence from Britain. The novel
stylistically rejects established norms. There is no central,
driving plot; rather, the chapters are a series of scenes and
descriptions that chronologically follow a group of five
characters over a period of months
TONI MORRISON

• Toni Morrison, original name Chloe Anthony

Wofford, (born February 18, 1931, Lorain, Ohio,
U.S.—died August 5, 2019, Bronx, New York),
American writer noted for her examination of
Black experience (particularly Black female
experience) within the Black community. She
received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993.
NOTABLE WORKS

• Morrison’s first book, The Bluest Eye (1970), is a novel of initiation concerning a
victimized adolescent Black girl who is obsessed by white standards of beauty and longs
to have blue eyes.
•  In 1973 a second novel, Sula, was published; it examines (among other issues) the
dynamics of friendship and the expectations for conformity within the community.
• Song of Solomon (1977) is told by a male narrator in search of his identity; its
publication brought Morrison to national attention.
• Tar Baby (1981), set on a Caribbean island, explores conflicts of race, class, and sex.
 • Published when Morrison was 40 years old, The Bluest
Eye was her debut novel. Though it was not met with
THE BLUEST
instant acclaim, it’s arguably her most intensely
EYE personal work, as it was set in Lorain County, where
Morrison grew up. The novel tells the story of Pecola,
a bullied young black girl who wishes more than
anything else for the hallmarks of white American
beauty — blue eyes, blond hair, fair skin — and whose
childhood rape by her father leads to her unraveling.
It’s not an easy read, but it’s an important one,
especially since many have sought to have the book
banned in classrooms and libraries.
• Born: November 16, 1930 Nigeria
• Died: March 21, 2013 (aged 82) Boston
Massachusetts
• Awards And Honors: Man Booker International
Prize (2007)
• Notable Works: “Arrow of God”
• A Nigerian novelist acclaimed for his
unsentimental depictions of the social and
psychological disorientation accompanying the
imposition of Western customs and values upon
traditional African society. 
NOTABLE WORKS

• In Arrow of God (1964), set in the 1920s in a village under British administration, the
principal character, the chief priest of the village, whose son becomes a zealous Christian,
turns his resentment at the position he is placed in by the white man against his own
people. A Man of the People (1966) and Anthills of the Savannah (1987) deal with
corruption and other aspects of postcolonial African life.
NOTABLE WORKS

• Achebe also published several collections of short stories and children’s books, including
How the Leopard Got His Claws (1973; with John Iroaganachi). Beware, Soul-
Brother (1971) and Christmas in Biafra (1973) are collections of poetry. Another
Africa (1998) combines an essay and poems by Achebe with photographs by Robert
Lyons. Achebe’s books of essays include Morning Yet on Creation Day (1975), Hopes
and Impediments (1988), Home and Exile (2000), The Education of a British-
Protected Child (2009), and the autobiographical There Was a Country: A Personal
History of Biafra (2012). In 2007 he won the Man Booker International Prize.
THINGS FALL APART

• Things Fall Apart is acclaimed as the finest novel written

about life in Nigeria at the end of the nineteenth century.
Published in 1958, it is unquestionably the world’s most widely
read African novel, having sold more than eight million copies
in English and been translated into fifty languages. 
JOSEPH
EPHRAIM CASELY HAYFORD
• Joseph Ephraim Casely Hayford was a West
African barrister, author, and political leader who
dedicated his life to helping improve conditions
for the people of West Africa. Casely Hayford
was born on September 3, 1866, the youngest of
three sons to parents Reverend John de Graft
Hayford and Mary (Awuraba) Brew, both of
Anomabu, Gold Coast (present-day Ghana) which
was then a colony in the British Empire.
NOTABLE WORKS

• Casely Hayford is best known for his six books about

West Africa including Gold Coast Native Institutions
(1903) and Ethiopia Unbound (1911), which is said to
be the first African novel written in English. 
NGUGI WA THIONG’O

• Ngugi wa Thiong’o, original name James

Thiong’o Ngugi, (born January 5, 1938, Limuru,
Kenya), Kenyan writer who was considered East
Africa’s leading novelist. His popular Weep Not,
Child (1964) was the first major novel in English
by an East African. As he became sensitized to
the effects of colonialism in Africa, Ngugi
adopted his traditional name and wrote in the
Bantu language of Kenya’s Kikuyu people.
NGUGI WA THIONG’O

• Kenyan writer and activist Ngugi wa Thiong'o

was awarded the 31st Catalonia International
Prize for his “distinguished and courageous”
literary work and for his defense of
African languages.
NOTABLE WORKS

• A Grain of Wheat (1967), generally held to be artistically more mature, focuses on the
many social, moral, and racial issues of the struggle for independence and its aftermath.
• A third novel, The River Between (1965), which was actually written before the others,
tells of lovers kept apart by the conflict between Christianity and traditional ways and
beliefs and suggests that efforts to reunite a culturally divided community by means of
Western education are doomed to failure.
NOTABLE WORKS

• Petals of Blood (1977) deals with social and economic problems in East Africa after
independence, particularly the continued exploitation of peasants and workers by foreign
business interests and a greedy indigenous bourgeoisie.
• In a novel written in Kikuyu and English versions, Caitaani Mutharaba-ini (1980; Devil
on the Cross), Ngugi presented these ideas in an allegorical form. Written in a manner
meant to recall traditional ballad singers, the novel is a partly realistic, partly fantastical
account of a meeting between the Devil and various villains who exploit the poor.
NOTABLE WORKS

• Mũrogi wa Kagogo (2004; Wizard of the Crow) brings the dual lenses of fantasy

and satire to bear upon the legacy of colonialism not only as it is perpetuated by a
native dictatorship but also as it is ingrained in an ostensibly decolonized culture itself.
WEEP NOT, CHILD

• The prizewinning Weep Not, Child is the story of

a Kikuyu family drawn into the struggle for
Kenyan independence during the state of
emergency and the Mau Mau rebellion.
OTHER NOTABLE PEOPLE THAT
MADE AN IMPACT TO THE
LIVES OF AFRICAN PEOPLE
MARTIN LUTHER KING,
 JR.

• Martin Luther King, Jr., (January

15, 1929-April 4, 1968) was born
Michael Luther King, Jr., but later
had his name changed to Martin.
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.

• At the age of thirty-five, Martin Luther King, Jr., was the youngest man to have received
the Nobel Peace Prize. When notified of his selection, he announced that he would turn
over the prize money of $54,123 to the furtherance of the civil rights movement.
• On the evening of April 4, 1968, while standing on the balcony of his motel room in
Memphis, Tennessee, where he was to lead a protest march in sympathy with striking
garbage workers of that city, he was assassinated.
I HAVE A DREAM

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its
creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the
sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat
of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of
freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not
be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today!
REFERENCES

• https://www.britannica.com/art/dramatic-literature
• https://www.britannica.com/biography/Elechi-Amadi
• https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/culture-magazines/concubine
• https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1986/soyinka/biographical/
• https://www.biography.com/writer/wole-soyinka
• https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/toni-morrison-essential-books-867897
/
• https://www.britannica.com/biography/Toni-Morrison
• https://www.blackpast.org/global-african-history/hayford-joseph-ephraim-casely-1866-19
30/
• https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ngugi-wa-Thiongo
• https://www.linguapax.org/en/ngugi-wa-thiongo-awarded-the-catalonia-international-priz
e-2019/#:~:text=Kenyan%20writer%20and%20activist%20Ngugi,his%20defense%20of
%20African%20languages
.
• https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1964/king/biographical/
• https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkihaveadream.htm