Biyi Bandele
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Biyi Bandele-Thomas (born 1967) is a Nigerian novelist and playwright generally known as Biyi Bandele. Bandele is one of the most versatile and prolific of the U.K.-based Nigerian writers, having turned his hand to theater, journalism, television, film, and radio, as well as the fiction with which he made his name. Acclaimed as both a prolific playwright and a versatile novelist, his 1997 adaptation of fellow Nigerian, Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart for the British stage, confirmed his place as an important voice on the post-colonial stage. He currently resides in the London.
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[edit] Nigeria to London
Biyi Bandele was born to Yoruba parents in Kafanchan, northern Nigeria, in 1967. His father was a veteran of the Burma Campaign while Nigeria was still part of the British Empire. Bandele spent the first eighteen years of his life in the northern part of the country being most at home in the Hausa cultural tradition. Later on, he moved to Lagos then studied drama at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ife-Ife, and finally left for London in 1990. A precocious and intuitive playwright, his talent was recognised early on and he won the International Student Playscript competition of 1989 with an unpublished play before claiming the 1990 British Council Lagos Award for an unpublished collection of poems.
[edit] Playwright
As a playwright, Bandele has worked with the Royal Court Theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Company, as well as writing radio drama and screenplays for television. His plays are: Rain; Marching for Fausa (1993); Resurrections in the Season of the Longest Drought (1994); Two Horsemen (1994), selected as Best New Play at the 1994 London New Plays Festival; Death Catches the Hunter and Me and the Boys (published in one volume, 1995). Brixton Stories, his stage adaptation of his own novel The Street (1999), premiered in 2001, and was published in one volume with his play, Happy Birthday Mister Deka, which premiered in 1999.
He was the Judith E. Wilson Fellow at Churchill College, University of Cambridge, in 2000-2001. He also acted as Royal Literary Fund Resident Playwright at Bush Theatre from 2002-2003.
[edit] Novelist
His novels, which include The Man Who Came in from the Back of Beyond (1991) and The Street (1999), are rewarding reading, capable of wild surrealism and wit as well as political engagement. His latest novel, Burma Boy has been described as "a fine achievement"[1] and is lauded for providing a voice for previously unheard Africans.
[edit] Bibliography
The Man Who Came In From the Back of Beyond Bellew, 1991
The Sympathetic Undertaker: and Other Dreams Bellew, 1991
Marching for Fausa Amber Lane Press, 1993
Resurrections in the Season of the Longest Drought Amber Lane Press, 1994
Two Horsemen Amber Lane Press, 1994
Death Catches the Hunter/Me and the Boys Amber Lane Press, 1995
Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart (adaptation) 1999
Aphra Benn's Oroonoko (adaptation) Amber Lane Press, 1999
The Street Picador, 1999
Brixton Stories/Happy Birthday, Mister Deka Methuen, 2001
Burma Boy Jonathan Cape, 2007
[edit] Awards
1989 International Student Playscript Competition Rain
1994 London New Play Festival Two Horsemen
1995 Wingate Scholarship Award
1998 Peggy Ramsay Award
2000 EMMA (BT Ethnic and Multicultural Media Award) for Best Play Oroonoko
In 2006 Bandele was named in the Independent as one of Africa's fifty greatest artists.
[edit] References
[edit] External links
The Playwrights Database [1]
The British Council [2]
Encompass Books [3]
Review of Burma Boy, his latest novel [4]
