Guest of the ilb 2003
Biyi Bandele (real name Bandele-Thomas) was born in 1967 in
northern Nigeria, a region which is largely Muslim. He stems from a
family which belonged to the Yoruba tribe and converted to
Christianity. He left his parents’ house at the age of 14 to earn his
living doing odd jobs, while also still going to school. At this
time he had already started work on his first novel. He studied Drama
at the University of Ile-Ife from 1987 to 1990. With his theater piece
“Rain” he won first prize in a competition, which was a
scholarship for a one-year stay in London. Bandele-Thomas remained in
London to work as a freelance writer and has since written a quick
succession of texts: narrative prose, poetry, radio plays, screenplays,
and theater pieces. He has received various awards, including the
London New Play Festival Award (1994) and has accepted invitations to
go on reading tours, attend conferences, and see performances of his
pieces in the U.S. and Canada as well as in various countries in
Africa, Asia, and Europe. Since 1993 he has primarily published his
work under the name Biyi Bandele.
His first novel “The Man Who Came in from the Back of Beyond” was
published in London in 1991 and in the same year in Germany under the
title “Bozo David Hurensohn”; it depicts a shrill and realistic
panorama of modern Nigeria. The novel’s first-person narrator, Lakemfa,
befriends his teacher who initially seems a bit odd. This teacher not
only shares his own past with Lakemfa, thereby triggering adventurous
incidents, but also gives him a manuscript to read, which is about
Bozo, whose real name is David, but who is only called bastard by his
father. Although at the end both stories prove themselves to be
fiction, they trigger a process of change and maturity for Lakemfa. At
the same time Bozo stands for a country, which following a war and a
fatal oil boom is in a state of upheaval. Daily school life,
omnipresent violence also in the family, tension between urban bustle
and rural life – Bandele transposes all of that in a language that is
rich in imagery and not lastly humorous. His elaborate narrative
technique, his wealth of language as well as his rich fantasy, which
always adds surprising surrealistic twists to his plots, have
repeatedly caused critics to draw parallels with representatives of
magic realism, like his fellow countryman Ben Okri. His third novel,
"Burma Boy" will be published in June 2007.Bandele lives in London.
Selected awards: 1st Prize – 13th International
Playscript Competition, British Council Lagos Award (1989/90),
Commonwealth Prize / Black Young Writers Competition, London New Play
Festival Award (1994)
© international literature festival berlin
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
The Man Who Came in from the Back of Beyond
Heinemann
Oxford, 1991
The Sympathetic Undertaker and Other Dreams
Bellew
London, 1991
Marching for Fausa
Amber Lane Press
Oxford, 1993
Two Horsemen
Amber Lane Press
Oxford, 1994
Death Catches the Hunter; and: Me and the Boys
Amber Lane Press
Charlbury, 1995
Aphra Benn´s Oroonoko
Amber Lane Press
London, 1999
The Street
Picador
London, 2000
Brixton Stories / Happy Birthday, Mister Deka D
Two Plays
Methuen Drama
London, 2001
Burma Boy
Jonathan Cape
London, 2007
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