Christopher Okigbo, 1930-67

Okigbo is a gift for a biographer. Byron - chasing women, verse and death - is in the same league. The Sunday Times in London described Christopher Okigbo's death in September 1967 fighting for the independence of Biafra as ̀the single most important tragedy of the Nigerian civil war.' Okigbo left behind a small but inspired body of lyrical verse which grew from his fascination with his mystical Igbo roots and with the poets of the classical world of Greece and Rome. This book captures the excitement of the independence decade of the Mbari Club and the journal Black Orpheus when Ibadan and Lagos, and Nsukka and Enugu became literary and artistic centres which led the whole continent. The Nigerian triumvirate of poet Christopher Okigbo, novelist Chinua Achebe and playwright Wole Soyinka achieved world attention for writing from Africa. Okigbo is brought to life through vivid interviews with his contemporaries. The book is full of Okigbo's arrant naughtiness at the expense of teachers, priests, colonial officials, friends and women. He would plunge into anything; sport, jazz, a coup, smuggling, gun-running, being a guerrilla. But there were periods when, in spite of all his bounce, his friends had to rescue him from deep despair. He learned to concentrate above all on the craft of poetry, at whatever inconvenience to his friends, throwing away version after version penned during all-night sessions. This first full scale biography reveals why Okigbo has become such a cult figure in world literature. --Book Jacket.