Ben Okri Interview: Video

Okri talks of his novel In Arcadia in a one-minute interview. It is free from Google and can be downloaded. I had difficulty playing it in WMP, but codecs are available to WMP11 that allow it to play correctly. However, beware of bundled codecs as they sometimes contain viruses. An alternative solution is to download the DivX Player, which is free.

This interview is really brief but demonstrates Okri’s genius as a writer. I’m searching for a rumored audio-only reading from his novel The Famished Road, which is supposed to be at the Lannan Foundation site, but it’s either been removed or I just can’t find it.

The African Well Fund

Another socially conscious post. One thing a good number of people don’t seem to be aware of are the environmental problems the continent faces, one of these being water shortage (or if not shortage, contamination).

The African Well Fund focuses its energies on Sub-Saharan Africa, where this problem is at its worst. Please follow the above link and read some of the information. The site also contains links to other information resources on this problem.

Something ironic is that water shortages are not strictly confined to Africa, or even desert regions, but here in the US we’ve experienced them as well, and our reactions oftentimes, if not well thought out, lead to further environmental damage. California is a good example of this, and we’re seeing the effects of water shortages in Las Vegas.

URHOBO HISTORICAL SOCIETY

Back to African Writers. I read Ben Okri for the first time a few years back in an international fiction anthology. Since the start of this course I’ve picked up a couple of his other works and found them just as satisfying as that first story I read.

Here, at the Urhobo Historical Society, one can find a good deal of information on Ben Okri, including a fantastic 1992 interview as well as links to other sites concerned with his fiction.

He is considered a top notch fiction writer, and I think he rivals, if not surpasses Achebe’s skill with language.

Genocide Intervention Network

Though it seems almost moot to place something in this blog concerning the most publicized social problem on the continent at this time, it is worthy in the sense that nothing is being done about it, and thus there is justification for more publicity.

If we are a nation that seeks to free people from tyranny and atrocity without conditions (oil), then we must, by necessity, take the genocide in Darfur seriously.

At the Genocide Intervention Network there is information available to help you (hopefully another student and not just the instructor) take action at a civilian level.

I hope you visit this site and others concerning this matter, and I hope it moves you to action.

The Mysterious Fate of the Library at Alexandria

An easy rebuttal to Hegel is to consider the Library at Alexandria, which predates Hegel’s thinking by a millennium.

Some have postulated that had it not been destroyed by the Romans, man might have landed on the moon five hundred years earlier than we did. Of course this is speculation, but here is a nifty little site examining the destruction of the Library.

Burnt libraries are like dead children to me.