“A Dangerous Love”Ben Okri’s Persisting Commitment to Literary Experimentation

  1. Maurice Frank O'Connor 1
  1. 1 Universidad de Cádiz
    info

    Universidad de Cádiz

    Cádiz, España

    ROR https://ror.org/04mxxkb11

Revista:
Atlantis: Revista de la Asociación Española de Estudios Anglo-Norteamericanos

ISSN: 0210-6124

Any de publicació: 2017

Volum: 39

Número: 1

Pàgines: 189-204

Tipus: Article

Altres publicacions en: Atlantis: Revista de la Asociación Española de Estudios Anglo-Norteamericanos

Resum

A once high-profile post-colonial writer, it is noticeable that the London-Nigerian novelist and essayist Ben Okri has all but dropped out of view as far as the literary establishment is concerned. While his earlier works still receive much academic attention and are deemed highly influential, critical engagements with his later fiction are almost non-existent. With this in mind, our aim is to map out the many transformations the author’s work has gone through and offer explanations as to the reasons behind certain negative receptions of the author’s work. To understand the new directions the author’s current writings have taken, one must analyse the totality of his novelistic writings as a single collective body striving towards a sustained renovation of the literary form. Our premise is that this experimentation might, contrary to its aim, be hampering the author’s success, and our study shall, therefore, examine in detail the experimental nature of these later works and offer a series of perceptions as to their possible shortcomings.

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