Ben Okri details love of short stories at African anthology launch

Nigerian-born Booker Prize winner Ben Okri was in conversation with Ghanaian publisher Margaret Busby at The Africa Centre in London on Tuesday 6 May.

The occasion was the launch of African Stories, an anthology of 36 stories selected by Okri published as part of the Everyman’s Pocket Classics series.

Speaking on the process of choosing the authors, Okri, who won the Booker Prize in 1992 for The Famished Road said, “in putting this anthology together, I focused on three things: excellence, mastery of form and wide representation of writers on the continent… By the time I was done there was no time for contemporaries. We must respect our elders.”

He also spoke about the importance and primacy of the short story as an art form in Africa.

“What is it about the African short story? It is intrinsically poetic, discursive, and essayistic. It comes closest to allowing the richness of the African spirit and it is closest to the oral storytelling traditions of fables and folktales. Our mothers couldn’t spend all day telling us novels, so stories had to be compressed into short stories,” he explained to laughter.

The two heavily-garlanded African literary figures thrilled the full room with a linguistic sparring session that spanned the best of an hour as Busby, the editor of celebrated anthologies Daughters of Africa and New Daughters of Africa, delved into the making of the anthology and Okri’s relationship to the short story.

“I have a passion for the short story,” Okri – whose first collection of short stories, Incidents at the Shrine, presaged, in many ways, his Booker Prize winning novel – told the audience.

“I was the first chairman of the Caine Prize [an annual literary award for the best short story by an African writer]. I helped set up the Caine Prize, so I have always loved the short story.”

Commenting on the inclusion of a story by Jomo Kenyatta, the first prime minister and president of independent Kenya, in the anthology, Okri said: “I have come to realise that there is a relationship between short stories and power. But that is another story.”

Okri read the opening lines of Chinua Achebe’s entry The Voter to highlight the ability of the short story to condense both image and story into one whole: “Rufus Okeke – Roof for short – was a very popular man in his village.”

Busby posed a pertinent question about women’s representation in the new anthology.

“Thirty-six stories by 36 writers. How many are women?”

Eight female writers are represented in the anthology: Nadine Gordimer and Doris Lessing (both Nobel laureates), Ama Ata Aido, Bessie Head, Grace Ogot, Clementine Nzuji Madiya, Saida Hagi-Dirie Herzi and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the youngest author in the collection.

“That is a slightly tilted question and an unfair one,” Okri replied, before explaining that he “wanted to represent all the older writers and put the African spirit on the world map.”

The evening ended with the presentation of the “Icon of The Africa Centre” award to Okri by Oba Nsugbe, chair of the centre.