Ben Okri OBE is a Nigerian poet and novelist. His novels include The Famished Road (winner of the Booker Prize), Songs of Enchantment, The Age of Magic, In Arcadia, Stars of The New Curfew, Astonishing the Gods and Dangerous Love. Other works include An African Elegy, A Way of Being Free and Birds of Heaven. His latest book is a collection of compressed stories called The Magic Lamp: Dreams of Our Age and will be published in September 2017. Other awards include the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Africa, the Paris Review Aga Khan Prize for Fiction, the Chianti Rufino-Antico Fattore International Literary Prize and the Premio Grinzane Cavour Prize. In addition, the University of Westminster awarded him an Honorary Doctorate of Literature. He is currently one of the Vice Presidents of the English Centre of International P.E.N.