Biyi Bandele

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.

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his talent was recognised early on and he won the International Student Playscript competition of 1989 with an unpublished play before claiming the 1990 British Council Lagos Award for an unpublished collection of poems.

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.

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" [ [http://arts.independent.co.uk/books/reviews/article2718286.ece Burma Boy, by Biyi Bandele - Reviews, Books - The Independent ] ] and is lauded for providing a voice for previously unheard Africans.

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

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.

References

External links

The Playwrights Database [http://www.doollee.com/PlaywrightsB/bandele-thomas-biyi.html]

The British Council [http://www.contemporarywriters.com/authors/p=auth56892222165d521178TgL308BB1E]

Encompass Books [http://www.encompassculture.com/results/?qs=Biyi+Bandele]

Review of Burma Boy, his latest novel [http://arts.independent.co.uk/books/reviews/article2718286.ece]