In conversation with Cajetan Iheka, Associate Professor of Literature, Yale University, and author of African Ecomedia: Network Forms, Planetary Politics

One of Nigeria’s most celebrated authors, Ben Okri is the author of many post-colonial novels, poetry, short story collections, and essays. He rose to international fame in 1980 upon the publication of his first novel, Flowers and Shadows, and is perhaps best known for The Famished Road, winner of the 1991 Booker Prize. A fable about the realities we create for ourselves, Astonishing the Gods was included, almost 25 years after its publication, in the BBC’s “100 Novels That Shaped Our World” list. Every Leaf a Hallelujah, the tale of a young girl searching for a special flower that can cure her ill mother, is a modern-day fairytale written to be read by adults and children alike.

Cajetan Iheka is Associate Professor of English at Yale University, author of Naturalizing Africa: Ecological Violence, Agency, and Postcolonial Resistance in African Literature, editor of Teaching Postcolonial Environmental Literature and Media, and coeditor of African Migration Narratives: Politics, Race, and Space.