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“... the logic of publicity and sales. Announcing the results in Oslo, where the thing was organised, Ben Okri told his audience: ‘If there is one novel you should read before you die, it is Don Quixote.’ Particularly if you’re a moribund Norwegian, since Okri has contributed an introduction to the latest Norwegian ...”

“... Sibiya’s abdication of the self and his discovery of concern for the well-being of others. Ben Okri writes about social disintegration – and he does it in language that is itself disintegrating and full of the terminology of vomiting and shit. The mood of his collection of short stories, Incidents at the Shrine, harks back to Chinua Achebe’s ...”

“... melodramatic insistence of Ted Hughes. Violence, and the resistance to it, are important themes in Ben Okri’s An African Elegy: but his declamatory mode largely proscribes subtle registrations like those of Burnside. Okri’s greatest public exposure as a poet came on the 1991 Booker Prize night, when he read what is ...”

“... September’s 50th anniversary celebrations (as well as Walcott and Livingstone, the list includes Ben Okri, Michèle Roberts, Elizabeth Cook, Iain Sinclair, Tom Raworth and Irvine Welsh), the administrators told me ‘family fun’ was to be the mood. So instead, would I give a talk about The Wobbly Tooth, a little children’s book I wrote thirty years ...”

“... the young artist-photographer who died with her mother in the Grenfell fire, and the ode that Ben Okri wrote the same night are instances.If any part is missing in the triangulation of body, name and mourning ceremony an injury has been done. This is one reason for the miasma that hangs over Grenfell Tower and maddens the survivors. A tenant cries ...”