Monday, 7 January 2013

MOHANLAL - THE REAL HERO

MOHANLAL - THE REAL HERO

Mohanlal Vishwanathan Nair (born 21 May 1960),[2] knownmononymously as Mohanlal, is an Indian film actor and producer best known for his work in Malayalam films.
Mohanlal made his acting debut in Thiranottam (1978) but the film was never released due to censorship issues. He followed that by a role as the lead antagonist in his first release Manjil Virinja Pookkal (1980) at the age of 20. Antagonistic parts in several movies followed before Mohanlal established himself as a lead actor playing a wide variety of character types in comedy and action films amongst others. He was labelled a superstar of Malayalam cinema in 1986 after the success of Rajavinte Makan, in which he played an underworld don. Mohanlal became a film producer with the 1990 musical hitHis Highness Abdullah and has also acted in a number of Tamil andBollywood films. Of these, his notable roles were in Iruvar, directed by Mani Ratnam, and Company, directed by Ram Gopal Varma. As well as being an actor and producer, Mohanlal also owns businesses involved in film distribution, restaurants and packaged spices.
He was elected as most popular Keralite in a 2006 online poll conducted byCNN-IBN on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Kerala's formation.[3] In 2001, the Government of India honoured him with the Padma Shri, India's fourth highest civilian honour, for his contributions to Indian cinema. He has won four Indian National Film Awards — two Best Actor Awards, one Special Jury Award for acting, and one Award for Best Film as producer along with six Kerala State Film Awards for Best Actor. In 2009, he became the first actor to be given the honorary rank of Lieutenant Colonel in the Territorial Army of India and in 2010 received an honorary doctorate from Sree Sankaracharya University of Sanskrit, Kerala.
Mohanlal was born in Pathanamthitta in south Kerala to Vishwananthan Nair, an officer in Kerala Government Secretariat who later on became the Law Secretary of the state and Santhakumary.[6] He had an elder brother, Pyarelal, who died in the early 2000s. Both his parents belonged to well known Nair families in Pathanamthitta district. He was raised in Thiruvananthapuram (Trivandrum) because of his father's job in the Secretariat. Mohanlal studied at Model School, Thiruvananthapuram, and graduated with a B. Com. from Mahatma Gandhi College inThiruvananthapuram

Mohanlal made his acting debut in 1978 with the film Thiranottam which was created by Mohanlal and his friends: Maniyan Pilla Raju, Suresh Kumar, Unni, Priyadarshan, Ravi Kumar and others. Mohanlal played Kuttappan, a mentally disabled servant in the movie. The film was completed but was never released due to censorship issues.[7]
In 1980, Mohanlal was cast in the lead antagonist role in Manjil Virinja Pookkal[8] – the directorial debut of Fazil – produced byNavodaya Appachan. The movie, in which debutants Shankar and Poornima Jayaram played the lead roles, became a major hit and for Mohanlal, "there was no looking back".[9] Mohanlal's friends had sent his application in response to an advertisement by Navodaya Studio.[10] He was auditioned for the role in front of a panel that included well-known directors; two of them gave him poor marks butFazil and Jijo Appachan liked him.[11] In an interview with Reader's Digest in 2004, Mohanlal said that his looks as a young man might have fit the villain's image.[12] By 1983, Mohanlal was credited in more than 25 feature films[8] most of which had him play negative roles.[12] Films like Ente Mohangal poovaniju, Iniyengilum, Visa, Attakalsham, Kaliyil Alppam Kariyam, Ente mamattikutiiyammakku, Engane Nee marakkum,Unaroo, & Sreekrishnaparunthu changed his villain image and it was through Sasikumar's "Ivide thudangunnu" he became a successful hero. Mohanlal played his first comic lead role in an ensemble cast, as a young man in love with a girl whom he mistakenly believes to be rich, in the 1984 comedy Poochakkoru Mookkuthi, also the debut of friend and noted film-makerPriyadarshan .[13] It also marked the beginning of Mohanlal-Priyadarshan duo which later made several successful movies; they have worked together in 29 movies till 2011.[14] In 1985, he recorded a song for the film Onnanam Kunnil.[13] Uyarangalil, Nokketha Doorathu Kannum Nattu, Boeing Boeing and Aram + Aram Kinnaram were some of his successful movies in this period.
The late 1980s and early 1990s are widely regarded as the golden age of Malayalam cinema,[15] with films characterised by detailed screenplays, lucid narration and fresh ideas narrowing the gap between art and commercial films.[16] Mohanlal was very lucky to play very different roles in films "made by the great masters" like G. Aravindan, Hariharan, M. T. Vasudevan Nair, Padmarajan, Bharathan andLohithadas.[17] Mohanlal, along with the actor and scriptwriter Sreenivasan who played his sidekick in several movies, showcased the angst of unemployed, educated Malayali youth forced to adapt to hostile environments in many realistic social satires,[18] some of which were written by Sreenivasan himself.[19]
1986 was a significant year in Mohanlal's career. He starred in T. P. Balagopalan M.A., directed by Sathyan Anthikad, for which he received his first Kerala State Film Award for Best Actor.[20] He portrayed an unemployed young man who shoulders the responsibility of his family. His performance in Sanmanassullavarkku Samadhanam as a harassed house-owner won him the Filmfare Award for Best Actor (Malayalam) also. Mohanlal was touted as the new Malayalam superstar after the box-office success of Rajavinte Makan in which he played an underworld don[21] He also starred in the tragedy Thalavattom, an uncredited adaptation of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, playing Vinod, a young man who becomes mentally ill upon witnessing his girlfriend's death. Mohanlal appeared in 36 movies in 1986.[17]
The following year, Mohanlal starred with Sreenivasan and Shobana in the Sathyan Anthikad comedy Nadodikkattu, which became a box-office success. Mohanlal and Sreenivasan reprised their roles as the detectives Dasan and Vijayan respectively in the sequels,Pattanapravesham(1988) and Akkare Akkare Akkare(1990). Thoovanathumbikal, directed by Padmarajan, in which he portrayed a person torn between his twin love interests, broke many stereotypes in Indian films,[18][22] such as the leading man falling in love with a second woman immediately after he is rejected by the first. The romantic comedy, Chithram, released in 1988, played for 365 days in a theatre, becoming the longest running Malayalam movie still which plays full shows daily.[23] Mohanlal won a Kerala State Special Jury Award in 1988 for his acting in the movies Padamudra, Aryan, Vellanakalude Nadu, Ulsavapittennu and Chithram.[20]
In 1989, The combination of writer Lohitha Das and director Sibi Malayil is considered to have produced some of his most haunting roles, his role of Sethu Madhavan, who dreams of becoming a police officer but ends up as a criminal, in the tragedy Kireedam, earned him a National Film Special Jury Award.[13] Mohanlal later recalled that his portrayal of Sethumadhavan's mental agony, commended as a natural performance, was spontaneous and that he "did what Sethumadhavan, my character, would have done in such a situation", adding that acting was "akin to entering another person’s body."[17]
In 1989, he acted in a movie which became a hit in the year, Varavelpu, which tells the story of a man who earned money in overseas and came back to his native to enjoy his life with family. He bought a bus, which changed his life fully. The former Prime Minister of India, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, mentioned the movie as an example for ignorance by Kerala towards global economic changes during the inauguration of Global Investor Meet held at Kochi on 18 January 2003.[24][25]
In the early 1990s, Mohanlal acted in a number of notable commercial movies, such as His Highness Abdullah, Midhunam and No.20 Madras Mail. His Highness Abdullah was the first movie produced by Mohanlal, under the banner of Pranavam Arts. His romantic comedy Kilukkam (1991) with Revathy is regarded as one of the most popular Malayalam films ever.[26] His role in Bharatham as aCarnatic singer who is burdened by a jealous brother, earned him the National Award for Best Actor in 1991.[8] Although not trained in classical dance, he portrayed a Bharatanatyam dancer in Kamaladalam(1992). He took help from his choreographer and his co-actorsVineeth and Monisha for enacting the dance scenes.[17] Rajashilpi, Sadayam, Yoddha and Vietnam Colony were the other successful movies of Mohanlal in the same year. The 1993 drama Devaasuram, written by Ranjith and directed by I. V. Sasi, was one of Mohanlal's most successful films and is regarded as a cult classic.[8] In 1994, Mohanlal starred along with Shobana and Suresh Gopi in Fazil'sManichitrathazhu in the lead role as a psychiatrist. The film was a critical and commercial success, and became one of the highest grossing Malayalam films. Sphadikam was his major commercial success in 1995. Mohanlal won his third Kerala State Film Award for Best Actor and fifth Filmfare Award for Best Actor (Malayalam) for his portrayal as a young man who becomes a thug, estranged from his father, upon failing to meet the latter's high expectations.
Priyadarshan's Kaalapani, an epic film about the prisoners in Cellular Jail of Port Blair and Lohithadas's Kanmadam (1998) are among the notable commercial successes in the second half of the decade. Mohanlal's first non-Malayalam movie was the Tamil biopic Iruvardirected by Mani Ratnam in which he starred opposite debutant Aishwarya Rai.[27] The controversial film,[28][29] in which Mohanlal depicted an actor who turns politician (based on M. G. Ramachandran), was a critical success and won many awards including Best Film award at the Belgrade International Film Festival and two National Film Awards.[30]
In 1997, he played the lead role in Guru. In 1998, he produced and starred in Harikrishnans alongside Mammootty and Juhi Chawla. The film was a commercial success but was not received well by critics.[31] The movie had two versions of climaxes which were screened in different regions based on whether Mohanlal or Mammootty was more popular there.[32] This, however, became controversial when lawsuits were filed claiming that prints exhibited in Hindu-dominated areas showed Mohanlal marrying the heroine, whereas the ones inMuslim-dominated areas showed Mammootty marrying her.[33]
Mohanlal depicted a Kathakali artist whose personal life is a tragedy in the 1999 Indo-French period drama Vanaprastham directed byShaji N. Karun. Since Mohanlal was not trained in Kathakali – a dance-drama form indigenous to Kerala, he took tips from reputed Kathakali dancers to essay the role, for which he received his second National Film Award for Best Actor,[34] fourth Kerala State Film Award for Best Actor and sixth Filmfare Award for Best Actor (Malayalam).[12] It was also adjudged the best feature film of the year and won the best editing award at National Film Awards. The film was also selected for the competitive section at the Cannes Film Festivaland several other international film festivals and won six Kerala State Film Awards.
Many movies made in this period built on Mohanlal's image as an invincible, larger-than-life hero. In 2000, Mohanlal starred inNarasimham playing a rogue with a good heart.[37] It became one of the highest grossing movies in the history of Malayalam cinema.[38]In the next two years, Mohanlal was typecast in similar larger-than-life action hero roles in movies like Ravanaprabhu, Praja, Onnaman,Thandavam and Chathurangam. These movies (except for Ravanaprabhu) were widely criticised for their repetitive plots, lewd dialogues, punch lines and male chauvinistic outlook.[38][39][40][41][42] "The Narasimham hangover is terrifically strong and it has, at least for the moment, killed the prospects of good films. I don't see any other reason for the failure of well made female-oriented films like Mazha andMadhuranombarakkattu," wrote The New Indian Express.[38]
In 2002, Mohanlal played the role of Sreenivasan IPS, a Mumbai police officer,[12] in his first Bollywood movie, Company, which introduced him to the Hindi-speaking audience in India and for which he won the IIFA Star Screen Award for Best Supporting Actor.[43][44] The movie dealt with the real life story of two underworld dons who ruled Mumbai played by Ajay Devgn and Vivek Oberoi. Mohanlal's performance was well received. The Hindu noted that the actor is "at his natural best" and "does not look stifled or anxious as other South Indian stars do when they appear in a Hindi movie for the first time".[45] In a 2010 online poll by Hindifilmnews.com, Mohanal's performance in Company was chosen "The Finest Performance Of A Bollywood Actor In The Last Decade (2001-2010)". He was #1 in the audiences' list and maintained #6 in the critics' list.[46]
The following year, Mohanlal, trying to change his action hero image,[47] returned to humour roles with Kilichundan Mampazham,Balettan, Hariharan Pillai Happy Aanu and Mr. Brahmachari. Kilichundan Mampazham, promoted as a comeback vehicle for the actor, received good reviews and box-office collection.[48][49][50] Balettan, directed by V. M. Vinu, was also a commercial success.[51]Mohanlal plays the role of Athanipparambil Balachandran, a bank employee always willing to lend a helping hand, who is forced to hide many secrets after his father's death leading to his family's mistrust.[52] In 2004, Natturajavu and Mambazhakkalam were his notable commercial successes.[53]
Mohanlal appeared in the 2005 black comedy Udayananu Tharam as an aspiring film director. Well received by the audience and the critics, the movie did well even in places where Malayalam films do not run in regular shows like Vadodara, Rajkot, Pune andAhmedabad.[19] In the same year, he appeared in director Blessy's second film Thanmathra, a film that tells the story of an individual suffering from Alzheimer's disease. The film received positive reviews and Mohanlal's performance was highly praised.[54] Mohanlal won his fifth Kerala State Film Award for Best Actor and seventh Filmfare Award for Best Actor (Malayalam) for his performance in a difficult role; his character does not speak in the second-half of the movie.[54][55][56]
In 2006, he worked with the director Sathyan Anthikkad, after nearly a decade, in the movie Rasathanthram, was a blockbuster & became one of the highest grossing malayalam film of the decade. Mohanlal also acted in Kirtichakra by director Major Ravi, in which he plays the role of an Indian Army officer Major Mahadevan. The movie was shot in Kashmir.[57] and was a huge blockbuster.[58] Adubbed version of the movie was released in Tamil as Aran, but Mohanlal disassociated himself with the movie since his voice was not used, stating that "I prefer to speak for my role in the film."[59] Mohanlal also acted in the sequels Kurukshetra (2008) and Kandahar(2010) in Major Mahadevan series. Mohanlal's character Major Mahadevan was highly acclaimed by the critics as well as the audience. In 2009 the Indian government conferred him with the honorary title of Lieutenant colonel from Indian Territorial Army considering his performance in the films Kirtichakra and Kurukshetra.
In 2007, Mohanlal won the Kerala State Film Award for Best Actor for his performance in the movie Paradesi directed by P.T. Kunju Muhammed. The movie garnered positive reviews,[60] with Sify.com noting that "Mohanlal is mesmerising and reinvents the idiom of acting once more with feeling." His July release Hallo became one of the biggest Malayalam hits in 2007.[61][62] In August that year, he appeared in his second Bollywood movie, Ram Gopal Varma Ki Aag, a remake of Bollywood's greatest hit Sholay. Mohanlal played the role played by Sanjeev Kumar in the original, against the criminal Babban Singh played by Amitabh Bachchan. However, the ambitious film was panned by critics,[63] ending up as a huge flop at the box office.[64] In 2009, Mohanlal appeared with Kamal Haasan in the Tamilmovie Unnaipol Oruvan, was a success in Tamil box office. His last film in 2009 was Ividam Swargamanu, directed by Roshan Andrews, was a success in theatres.

In 2009 and 2010, the actor didn't find any success. In 2010 Shikkar was the only hit for Mohanlal. He also acted with Amitabh Bachchan in Kandhahar. His first release of 2011 was the multi-starrer Christian Brothers released on 18 March 2011; it became the highest grossing Malayalam film in 2011. His next film was China Town which also became ablockbuster. Another release was the highly acclaimed Pranayam, which was released on 31 August 2011. His performance in Pranayam has been applauded by critics and viewers. His next film, Snehaveedu, directed by Sathyan Anthikkadu, also became a hit.[65][66] His last film of the year was Oru Marubhoomi Katha. Directed by Priyadarshan; the movie became average at the box office. His first release in 2012 was Casanovva, the much-delayed big-budget movie. The costliest movie in Malayalam film industry, Casanovva was a failure—both among critics [67][68] and at the box office.[69] His next two films -- B. Unnikrishnan'sGrandmaster and Ranjith's Spirit were successes. Director Joshiy's Run Baby Run.,[70] his Onam release, went on to become the 3rd highest grosser of the year.[citation needed]. His 2012 last movie Major Ravi directed Karma Yodha fall in box office due to high negative reviews.
Mohanlal has acted in over 300 Malayalam films and produced or co-produced over 35 films. His acting credits include some Tamil,Hindi, Telugu, Kannada films. He has acted in 4 professional plays. He has sung over 25 songs, most of them for the films he acted in.
Like most other Indian stars, Mohanlal does not have a theatre background. However, he has acted in a few plays. He debuted on the stage as Karna (a character in the Indian epic Mahabharata) in Karnabharam, a Sanskrit play that was premiered in New Delhi as part of the National Theatre Festival directed by Kavalam Narayana Panicker. The play depicts Karna's mental agony a day before theKurukshetra War, as he thinks about his past and his faith.[71] He received a standing ovation each time the play was staged.[12]
Kadhayattam was a presentation enacted by Mohanlal, depicting 10 unforgettable characters and situations selected from Malayalam literature.[12] He has said that it is his offering to his mother tongue. The play was staged at Kottayam on 1 November 2003.[72] The presentation was a fusion of stage acting, movie expression, sound and lighting techniques and music, conceived by film director T. K. Rajeev Kumar.[73] Chayamukhi is Mohanlal's latest play, presented under the banner of Kalidasa Visual Magic, a production house promoted jointly by Mohanlal and Malayalam actor Mukesh. Mohanlal performed the role of Bheeman and Mukesh performed the role ofKeechakan. The play was first staged at Thrichur on 12 March 2008.[74] Mohanlal has also appeared in several television commercials and advertisemens including Malabar Gold ad with Hema Malini and Sania Mirza, MCR ad with Sarath Kumar, Oceanus ad, Manappuram Gold Loan ad with Akshay Kumar, etc.

Mohanlal was selected as the Goodwill Ambassador of Kerala State Athletics by the Kerala State Athletics Association.[76] He is also the Goodwill Ambassador of AIDS awareness campaign by Kerala AIDS Control Society for which he acted in short films,[77] and of Handloom textiles in Kerala.[78] Other commercials, designed for Kerala markets, include LG,[79] Nerolac, Malabar Gold, Original Choice Rum, Manappuram Finance, MCR textiles, Oceanus constructions, Mohanlal's Tastebuds, Vismayas Max animation academy, Hedge Equities and Pankaja Kasthuri
Mohanlal has also started several business ventures related to film production and distribution, restaurants and packaged spices among others. He owns Maxlab Cinemas and Entertainments, a Malayalam film distribution company and Vismayas Max, a film post-production studio and college for dubbing artists at Kinfra Film and Video Park, Trivandrum. He has produced films under the bannerPranavam Arts. He owns many restaurants including a chain in Dubai called Mohanlal's Tastebuds,[81] Travancore Court in Kochi and The Harbour Market in Bangalore.[82] He is also a partner in Mohanlal's Tastebuds, a pickle and curry powder company.[83] His other business ventures include Uni Royal Marine Exports – a Kozhikode-based seafood export company and Jose Thomas Performing Arts Centre Kochi.[84] He is an independent director of Clenergen India Private Limited[85] In 2009, Mohanlal, along with Priyadarshan, tried to bid for an Indian Premier League cricket team based in Kochi;[86] they withdrew the bid on failing to source enough funds after a change in rules was introduced
Mohanlal has been described in Indian media as one of the versatile actors and has been lauded for his natural acting style.[8][55][88][89][90] Reader's Digest India described him in 2004 as "cinema's jack of all trades and master of many".[12] He was also listed 80th in India's Most Trusted Survey conducted by Reader's Digest in 2010.[91] Bollywood director Ram Gopal Varma has described Mohanlal as "one of the finest actors in the country who can slip into any role easily".[92]
In 2003 on the 25th anniversary of Mohanlal's film career, a week-long celebration and a stage show was held in Thiruvananthapuram by his fans and friends. The proceeds from the stage show was donated to charity.[93] Malayalam television channels, Asianet Television and Surya TV also held separate stage shows to celebrate the anniversary.
Mohanlal along with Mammootty, Dileep and Suresh Gopi have been accused in the media for causing a crisis in Malayalam cinema due to the "superstar" effect. In 2005 Mohanlal, Mammootty and Dileep controlled 95% of the box-office revenue of Malayalam cinema. These 3 artists have been criticized for their high remunerations, preference for formulaic content and larger-than-life male-oriented roles. Mohanlal fan clubs are present throughout Kerala; they help in creating a buzz around new releases and ensure a good opening in movie screens, a crucial factor in the success of the film. In 2007, prohibition activists in Kerala protested against Mohanlal for appearing in a surreptitious whiskey advertisement. Mahatma Gandhi National Foundation,a Kottayam-based NGO, accused the actor of violating laws that ban direct liquor advertisements. However, Mohanlal stated that it was unfair to single him out when so many other Indian actors were doing similar endorsements on television.
In 2010 Mohanlal was part of a public spat involving Malayalam writer and social-critic Sukumar Azhikode, actor Thilakan andAssociation of Malayalam Movie Artistes (AMMA). The controversy erupted after Azhikode supported Thilakan's accusations that AMMA had imposed an 'undeclared ban' on him suggesting that the leading stars of Malayalam should step aside since they are old, out-of-shape[ and charged exorbitant remunerations resulting in mounting losses for the industry. He added that Mohanlal was "a hypocrite who hid his advancing age to act with younger heroines" Mohanlal responded that Azhikode was having "hallucinations" and his remarks were "an aged-uncle's joke". This led to further personal remarks[ by Azhikode against Mohanlal. Other actors likeMammootty and Innocent defended Mohanlal and the media was, in general, critical of the comments by Azhikode. Azhikode filed a defamation suit against Mohanlal in August 2010 The forest department filed a case against Mohanlal for keeping an elephant tusk at his home under the Wildlife Protection Act 1972.

[edit]Personal life

Mohanlal lives with his family in Thevara, Kochi. He married Suchitra, daughter of Tamil film producer K. Balaji[106] on 28 April 1988.Mohanlal later recalled in an interview that Suchitra used to send him cards because she wanted to marry him. Their horoscopes did not match at first, but later it was found that the astrologer erred. Mohanlal has two children – Pranav and Vismaya. Pranav has acted in a few movies, debuting in Mohanlal's film Onnaman. Mohanlal did not object when his son expressed a desire to act as "Kids may have many such ambitions. If we can help them realise something, what is the problem?"[107] He owns a house at a villa inArabian Ranches and a flat in Burj Khalifa at Dubai.[109] Mohanlal is a self-described foodie.[12][110] He also enjoys melodious music. Mohanlal is a strong believer in destiny and spirituality. He likes to read Osho, J. Krishnamurti, Aurobindo and Ramana Maharshi.[9] He has often stated that the turn of events in his life, including his film career, was accidental.
In 2008, while shooting for the movie Kurukshetra in which he plays the role of an Army officer, Mohanlal expressed interest to joinTerritorial Army of India as an officer.[111] On July 9, 2008, he was formally inducted to the Territorial Army in the rank of Lieutenant Colonel by Army Chief Deepak Kapoor. Rules had to be amended to accommodate him as men above the age of 42 are not eligible to join the volunteer force.[112][113]
Mohanlal was awarded an honorary doctorate by Sree Sankaracharya University of Sanskrit, Kalady in 2010. The citation praised Mohanlal as "an excellent performer after actor Sathyan in Malayalam film world, who essayed a rich variety of roles with equal ease and poise."

[edit]

In 2008, Mohanlal underwent 18 months of escape artist training under Gopinath Muthukad. He had planned to perform a stunt calledBurning Illusion in Thiruvananthapuram, however this was cancelled later on allegations that it is a dangerous act.[115]

[edit]Cricket

Mohanlal is the captain of the Kerala Strikers team in the Celebrity Cricket League (CCL) held in 2011–12

[edit]Awards and achievements

Main article: List of awards and nominations received by Mohanlal


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Gillian Allnutt-ENGLISH GOLD COIN ALLNUT


Gillian Allnutt

She was educated at Newnham College, Cambridge and the University of Sussex.

Since 1973 she has taught English and Creative Writing in London and Newcastle upon Tyne, and has also worked as a performer, publisher, journalist and freelance editor. She was a collective member of Sheba Feminist Publishers (1981-3), and from 1983 to 1988 was Poetry Editor at City Limits magazine.

Gillian Allnutt has published several major poetry collections: Spitting the Pips Out(1981); Beginning the Avocado (1987); Blackthorn (1994); Nantucket and the Angel(1997); Lintel (2001); Sojourner (2004); and How The Bicycle Shone: New and Selected Poems (2007). Nantucket and the Angel and Lintel were both shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize. She is also the co-editor of The New British Poetry, 1968-1988 (1988) and is the author of Berthing: A Poetry Workbook (1991).

A Royal Literary Fund Fellow from 2001-2003, Gillian Allnutt teaches Creative Writing, currently at Newcastle University. In 2005, she won the Northern Rock Foundation Writer's Award. She lives in Co. Durham.
Their mystical bent is expressed in language at once spare and musical, austere in tone yet full of sympathetic human feeling. Alongside the moral seriousness there is also a vein of Stevie Smith-like humour, which appears in zany homely images and phrases. ‘My Cross’, for instance, summons up ‘Great Aunt Agnes, with whose saintly name / Very little indeed will rhyme’, and her christening gift of a ‘pagan, strange and in fact Egyptian’ cross. ‘Ankh means life, says my Concise Oxford Dictionary’, it continues, ‘And I wonder why there is as yet no Insurance Company / With such a sturdy helpful name. / Perhaps I will start one’. Such an offbeat work is in amongst others in Blackthorn (1994) that arise from far more serious matters. For instance, her father’s war experience in helping to liberate Belsen Concentration Camp; he came home ‘with bits of it under his skin and the bowl of his heart in his hands / …. And, in his pocket, proudly, the souvenir spoon’ (‘The Swastika Spoon’).
When reviewing How the Bicycle Shone, Sean O’Brien identified ‘the listening stillness of Allnutt’s contemplative notes and meditations’, which ‘belong equally to the traditions of religious enquiry and poetry’. He commended her ‘scrupulous effort to balance feeling with the effort to understand and be reconciled to loss’. In conclusion, he called hers a poetry ‘of keeping faith, of remaining open to enlightenment’ (Sunday Times, 22 July 2007). We can identify these characteristics in Allnutt’s work almost from its outset in Spitting the Pips Out (1981). In ‘mother you never told me how to mend’, she rewrites a Shakespearean metaphor as traditional female work: ‘all the world’s a sheet / and all the women in it here to turn / sides to middle when it gets torn’. Then there is echoing of the famed opening line of ‘Daddy’ by Sylvia Plath: ‘it does not do and it does not do / to sit all day and sew’. Yet its essential analogy is with the soul (‘worn thin with wondering’) and how ‘the light of another world filters through / these bare threads’.
Beginning the Avocado (1987) contains a delightful ‘Ode’, one of her best-known poems, though also (in its playful eroticism) somewhat uncharacteristic. This is a love poem to her bicycle, ‘O my trusty steed, / my rusty three-speed’, of whom she confesses, ‘I have spent sleepless nights/ in pondering your parts – those private // and those that all who walk the street / may look at’. But elsewhere in the book tragedy intrudes on personal lives, whether ‘Hiroshima, 1945’, ‘the trouble in South Africa’ (‘At Dinner’), or mourning the suicides of Virginia Woolf, Plath, and Marina Tsvetayeva: ‘I cannot say it is love stops short / of the rope / or the river / the quiet caress of gas in an uncaring winter’. In the heart / avocado stone analogy of the title poem, ‘The stone / remembers // to root / me in another time’.  Then ‘the poem itself splits / open, letting / in // death’.
After living and working in London for the best part of two decades, during which she was poetry editor of City Limits magazine, Allnutt returned in 1988 to her Tyneside home territory and was clearly inspired by this harsher northern climate. Poems such as ‘About Benwell’ and ‘After the Blaydon Races’ take a rather jaunty look at these run-down places and ‘people with faces like broken promises’. Indeed, in the latter, ‘the big yellow bus of the sun bowls breakneck into Benwell also’. The Autumn sunshine is positively cheerful: ‘Shall the old yellow bus, October, stop and beautifully steep us / in its pennyworth of ale, its picnic // cloth of gold unfolded on the rough grass?’. The landscape seeped into her work in meditative, quasi-religious ways: ‘Of the metaphysical waters of Tyne and of the hills / I shall think, // of my elliptical heart, of the moonlight / speaking with tongues’ (‘Letter to’). And, on ‘Clara Street’, ‘The river’s a common language // and the lit stones of the yard / attentive’.
With the publication of Nantucket and the Angel (1997), short-listed for the T.S. Eliot Prize, Allnutt’s work assumed a higher degree of recognition. The collection again intersperses serious and homely scenarios, evocations of spiritual yearnings with occasionally whimsical notes. ‘The Singing Pylons’, an example of the latter, ‘mumble on dark summer days’, and ‘O all night long they sing / Their lonely song, like whales uninterrupted, to Esh Winning / And, if they could, they’d sit down / And weep by the waters of Wear’. Esh Winning, another poem informs us, is the place where the poet has a garden: ‘Who pulls the purple columbines / Out of the not quite dark midsummer midnight?’ In the house, ‘full of visions’, the Bible is ‘propped like an elbow on the ironing-board within’. These domestic (somewhat William Blake-like) visions are of ‘the little thud of angels’ with ‘their pomegranate smell’. Sitting in a rocking-chair she can hear the angels ‘come and go // between the kettle and the fire’ (‘After Breakfast’). Other poems (‘Annunciation’, ‘Epiphany’) similarly conjoin the visionary and the everyday, while, in ‘The Garden’, ‘You were in love with the splendid / rosewood of the Word. // And now the word rose weeps for you’.
The respectful critical acclaim that greeted Lintel (2001) and Sojourner (2004) no doubt helped secure her the prestigious (as well as lucrative) Northern Rock Foundation Writer’s Award in 2005. The poems in these volumes are full of Biblical, historical or family characters and their fragmentary stories, voices that insist on being heard: ‘I am not lost. I harbour my loneliness here / By the larkspur’. There is also the voice of the poet talking to herself: ‘It is the road to God / that matters now, the ragged road, the wood. // And if you will, drop pebbles here and there / like Hansel, Gretel’ (‘The Road Home’). Paintings and the music of Arvo Part now inspire her. There’s the perspective of the past to meditate upon, as in ‘Literature in Childhood’, and (in its brief entirety) ‘The Fifties’: ‘There were windows the war had left alone. / Imagine. / A world that would open’.  
The final section of How the Bicycle Shone contains her most recent poems, Wolf Light (2007), more pared-down and at times prayer-like. Female characters from the Bible again feature, Mary Magdalene and ‘a woman of Samaria’. Perhaps most notable is a sequence in memoriam her father and mother, meditating on their lives, deaths and their marriage. This is movingly encapsulated in a ‘Requiem for All Souls’, held, a note informs us, at Durham Cathedral in 2004. This evokes ‘mother, everywhere’ whose body is ‘gone to bone then cinder’, while ‘Men, like wooden gods, like war, go on’. Often strange, musically rich and psychologically intense, Gillian Allnutt’s peculiar visions continue to fascinate us.
2007
How the Bicycle Shone: New and Selected Poems, Bloodaxe
2004
Sojourner, Bloodaxe
2004
Hob Green, pamphlet, Phoenix Poetry Pamphlets (France)
2001
Lintel, Bloodaxe
1997
Nantucket and the Angel, Bloodaxe
1994
Blackthorn, Bloodaxe
1991
Berthing: A Poetry Workbook, NEC/Virago
1988
The New British Poetry, 1968-1988, co-editor, Paladin
1987
Beginning the Avocado, Virago
1985
Lizzie Siddall: Her Journal (1862), pamphlet, Greville Press
1981
Spitting the Pips Out, Sheba
1978
The Rag and Bone Man's Daughter Imagines a Happy Family, Privately Printed

Awards

2005
Northern Rock Foundation Writer's Award
2001
T. S. Eliot Prize, Lintel, shortlist
1998
T. S. Eliot Prize, Nantucket and the Angel, shortlist





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THE AFRICAN PERL BEN OKRI

THE AFRICAN PERL BEN OKRI

 Short Stories, Poetry, Non-Fiction, Fiction,Drama
He grew up in London before returning to Nigeria with his family in 1968. Much of his early fiction explores the political violence that he witnessed at first hand during the civil war in Nigeria. He left the country when a grant from the Nigerian government enabled him to read Comparative Literature at Essex University in England.

He was poetry editor for West Africa magazine between 1983 and 1986 and broadcast regularly for the BBC World Service between 1983 and 1985. He was appointed Fellow Commoner in Creative Arts at Trinity College Cambridge in 1991, a post he held until 1993. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1987, and was awarded honorary doctorates from the universities of Westminster (1997) and Essex (2002).

His first two novels, Flowers and Shadows (1980) and The Landscapes Within(1981), are both set in Nigeria and feature as central characters two young men struggling to make sense of the disintegration and chaos happening in both their family and country. The two collections of stories that followed, Incidents at the Shrine (1986) and Stars of the New Curfew (1988), are set in Lagos and London.

In 1991 Okri was awarded the Booker Prize for Fiction for his novel The Famished Road (1991). Set in a Nigerian village, this is the first in a trilogy of novels which tell the story of Azaro, a spirit child. Azaro's narrative is continued in Songs of Enchantment (1993) and Infinite Riches (1998). Other recent fiction includesAstonishing the Gods (1995) and Dangerous Love (1996), which was awarded the Premio Palmi (Italy) in 2000. His latest novels are In Arcadia (2002) and Starbook(2007).
A collection of poems, An African Elegy, was published in 1992, and an epic poem,Mental Flight, in 1999. A collection of essays, A Way of Being Free, was published in 1997. Ben Okri is also the author of a play, In Exilus.
His most recent books are A Time for New Dreams (2011), a collection of linked essays, and a new collection of poetry, Wild (2012).
Ben Okri is a Vice-President of the English Centre of International PEN, a member of the board of the Royal National Theatre, and was awarded an OBE in 2001. He lives in London.
In his recent book, A Time for New Dreams (2011), Ben Okri describes poetry as ‘the great river of soul-murmurings that runs within humanity’, and ‘true literature’ as ‘the encounter of possibilities’ that ‘tears up the script of what we think humanity to be’.

Such poetic metaphors and humane concerns indeed characterise the peculiar beauty of Okri’s writing. This can be read as blending the African oral storytelling tradition with Magic Realism.

A long-time resident in London, Okri takes as his grand subject the post-colonial history of his ancestral Nigeria, conjuring up panoramas of souls, visions, dreams, and suffering humanity’s struggle against exploitation and corruption. The latter especially resonates throughout the fabulous trilogy of novels that began with The Famished Road (1991), his several collections of short stories, essays, and poetry volumes including the just-published Wild (2012). Other important subjects for Okri are the demands of art and politics, symbolised in rich flights of fancy, allied to Jonathan Swift-like satirical allegories.

The Famished Road won the Booker Prize For Fiction in 1991. Its narrator is Azaro, a stubborn spirit-child who calls himself ‘an unwilling adventurer into chaos and sunlight, into the dreams of the living and the dead’; he is a witness for his parents and the compound they live in, a go-between for humans and spirits. This is necessary, because ‘the world is full of riddles that only the dead can answer’. It is also full of ‘the rotten milk of politics’, violence, traditional native rituals, human-animal hybrids, apparitions, sudden transformations of fortune and ‘a delerium of stories’. Azaro’s father is boxer ‘Black Tyger’, who fights fearsome spirit opponents, but also champions the community, as vote-seeking politicians and their thugs turn up with bribes and favours. The atmosphere is feverish but also hopeful, with pre-Independence rallies taking place.

The trilogy continues with Songs of Enchantment (1993) and Infinite Riches (1998). By the opening of the third novel, ‘the future rulers of the nation slept in peace …. They dreamt of bottomless coffers to steal from’. Looming ever larger is bar-owner and power-broker Madame Koto, styled as ‘the priestess of a new and terrible way’, about to give birth to three monstrous children. She is the most exotic character – vain, corrupt but generous – who stages her wedding feast just as extravagantly as she supports the Party of the Rich. Despite her sycophantic celebrants, Azaro forsees her death and a future of scandals and coups, ‘the war that was being dreamt into being by the nation in advance’. In a spectacular ironic finale, elections are held and Madame Koto is duly stabbed – only to re-emerge after the funeral in a new car with a ghostly chauffeur.

The poems in An African Elegy (1992) are lyrical yet often angry, sharing some of the same imagery as the novels. ‘Political Abiku’, for instance, (abiku are spirit children impatient to be born): ‘She screamed again: / The birth-pains had returned / And another bloody / Parturition wracked our / Demented nation’. But there are also love poems: ‘The dreams I could never touch / felt like your body. / Your gentleness made the / Night soft’ (‘I Held You in the Square’). Or romantic regret: ‘And if you should leave me / I would say that the ghost / Of Cassandra / Has passed through / My eyes’. Okri’s eye falls upon the squalor of ‘Demolition Street: London, 83’, in describing tower blocks with ‘joyless murals’ and lorry drivers ‘nodding in dreams of resentment and finance’. By contrast, Lagos, is a ‘City of tainted mirrors! / City of chaotic desires!’, where ‘we rush through heated garbage days / With fear in morbid blood-raw eyes’ (‘Darkening City: Lagos, 83’). The title poem is an optimistic meditation, opening: ‘We are the miracles that God made / To taste the bitter fruit of Time. / We are precious. / And one day our suffering / Will turn into the wonders of the earth’.

Okri showed his early mastery of the short story with Stars of the New Curfew(1988). The lurid titular tale depicts a salesman and his manic sales patter for quack medicines, claiming to cure ‘anything from headaches to elephantiasis’. On board a crowded bus, he sells some to the driver, resulting in a crash. A political dimension is pointed up: the salesman’s boss then insists he tries out a new drug to rectify the problems caused by the old one. ‘In the City of Red Dust’, concerns unemployed Emokai, who sells blood for money to buy drinks in celebration of the military governor’s birthday, while his girlfriend is raped by five soldiers. Young artist Omovo sees corpses in the river and then the soldiers responsible drinking with his father (‘In the Shadow of War’).    

In Starbook (2007) and Tales of Freedom (2009), Okri continues his allegorical critiques of power. But in the latter his forms have been pared down to what he calls ‘stokus’, amalgamating story and haiku, a ‘serendipity’ of vision or paradox. Freedom is a linking theme, as in the opening tale of an old couple lost in the forest with their enigmatic slave Pinprop. Other urgent causes manifest themselves: a deadly disease is at large in ‘The Golden Inferno’, by implication AIDS, though ‘the long denial was over’. ‘The War Healer’ concerns a man tending the wounded of endless conflicts; his bride joins him in No Man’s Land, her wedding dress ‘darkened with gore’. The speaker of ‘Music for a Ruined City’ finds himself ‘witnessing the faces of mute grief, with Mozart in my heart, like ice over a wound’.

Okri has shown his long-time commitment to freedom by his involvement with International PEN. As he states unequivocally in A Time for New Dreams: ‘Nations that imprison, torture or assassinate, or drive their writers into exile fall into the deadlands of their own darkness’. In an online interview discussing this book of essays, Okri described it as having ‘the melody of childhood’ as the keynote, ‘running against other melodies of politics and censorship’ (Granta magazine, 7 April 2011). Thus, there are meditations on childhood as the ideal place for the imagination: it is ‘the Nile of life, the Eden, the Atlantis’. And, more satirically, ‘our childhoods pass obscure judgements on us’. Africa itself is ‘our dreamland, our spiritual homeland’, which is also ‘a challenge to the humanity and sleeping wisdom of the world’. Furthermore, ‘We have to heal the Africa in us if we are going to be whole again’. Okri’s aphorisms and paradoxes, finely tuned to his subjects, also range over the arts. In ‘Photography and Immortality’, he observes that it is ‘always time travel’, adding that it is ‘the dream, the interval, which we take to be the real’. Ben Okri’s poetic manner, his crowded dream-like imagination, his satirical eye and ethical concerns: all these make him a stimulating figure, amidst the ongoing cultural and political dialogues between Africa and the West.    


Dr Jules Smith, 2012

Bibliography

2012
Wild, Rider Books
2011
A Time for New Dreams, Rider Books
2009
Tales of Freedom, Rider Books
2007
Starbook, Rider Books
2002
In Arcadia, Weidenfeld & Nicolson
1999
Mental Fight, Phoenix House
1998
Infinite Riches, Phoenix House
1997
A Way of Being Free, Phoenix House
1996
Dangerous Love, Phoenix House
1995
Birds of Heaven, Orion
1995
Astonishing the Gods, Phoenix House
1993
Songs of Enchantment, Cape
1992
An African Elegy, Cape
1991
The Famished Road, Cape
1988
Stars of the New Curfew, Secker & Warburg
1986
Incidents at the Shrine, Heinemann
1981
The Landscapes Within, Longman
1980
Flowers and Shadows, Longman

Awards

2001
OBE
2000
Premio Palmi (Italy), Dangerous Love
1995
Crystal Award (World Economic Forum)
1994
Premio Grinzane Cavour (Italy), The Famished Road
1993
Chianti Ruffino-Antico Fattore International Literary Prize, The Famished Road
1991
Booker Prize for Fiction, The Famished Road
1988
Guardian Fiction Prize, Stars of the New Curfew, shortlist
1987
Paris Review/Aga Khan Prize for Fiction, Incidents at the Shrine
1987
Commonwealth Writers Prize (Africa Region, Best Book), Incidents at the Shrine
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BEN OKRI


BEN OKRI
In most large bookshops across the world, including in African cities such as Nairobi, novels by African writers are often “ghettoised” in a remote corner next to the Travel or Anthropology section. This phenomenon is a result of a variety of factors.
One, it is assumed that novels by African writers are valuable, not so much for the stories they tell, but for the insights they provide into African culture and traditions.
Two, there is a widely held belief, especially among liberal Western literary critics, that “the African novel” is a special genre that should be judged in the context of the author’s socio-historical background and aesthetic traditions, and not by Western values.
Three, owners of bookshops assume that readers of books by Africans will only do so when they are forced to read them, as students of African history and society, as foreign corresponds sent to cover “the dark continent” or as literature professors who need to make comparative analyses of “African” and Western literature.
The interesting thing about the ghettoisation of books by Africans is that while books about Africa by Western writers find pride of place in the fiction or non-fiction sections of bookshops, books about Africa by African writers are given their own space in the back of the bookshop where they can only be found by those who search for them.
Hence, a highly mediocre memoir, such as The White Masai by Corrine Hofmann, will be displayed prominently in the front of the bookshop and Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s seminal book, Decolonising the Mind, will either not be stocked or will be relegated to a dark corner.
No one understands this phenomenon better than the Zimbabwean writer Petina Gappah, whose short story collection, An Elegy for Easterly, was recently shortlisted for the prestigious Orwell prize for political writing.
At the Storymoja Hay Festival in Nairobi last weekend, Petina wondered whether the label “African writer” was an impediment to the mainstreaming of so-called “African literature” and whether this labelling was based on the false assumption that a story written by an African was representative of his or her entire society.
This then leads to the question of “authenticity” and whether an African writer is true to her traditions and values, or whether she is merely mimicking Western literary forms.
Petina believes that these discussions are misleading, if not patronising. People write because they have something to say, not because they want to be ambassadors for their entire societies.
“Writing is not about representation,” she says. “It is about my take on the world and all the worlds that I inhabit.
“These worlds could be real, such as Zimbabwe, where I was raised, or Geneva, where I lived for many years, or they could be worlds of my imagination which I have never visited. My stories are mine – they are not the voice of every Zimbabwean.”
The narrative about Africa was, until recently, being told mainly by Western writers such as Joseph Conrad and Karen Blixen. These works often portrayed Africans as savage beings inhabiting wild and beautiful places that were only accessible to the most adventurous Europeans.
But this is slowly changing with the emergence of new African writers such as Chimamanda Adichie and Ben Okri, who have helped to mainstream literature by Africans and who are now being judged not as “African writers” but as literary icons in their own right.
The Storymoja Hay Festival is in itself an attempt to mainstream literature by Africans into the global literary circuit and to expose non-African writers to literature from the continent.
Some of my favourite moments during the festival included watching a highly irreverent but extremely funny performance by the award-winning comedy writer Jane Bussman, who cleverly managed to make a highly political and disturbing statement about the Ugandan Government’s war against Joseph Kony of the Lord’s Resistance Army using British humour and satire interspersed with horrific images of child soldiers and dead bodies.
But the moment that really touched me was when a young woman came up to Atsango Chesoni, a member of the Committee of Experts (who was sitting next to me during a highly entertaining performance by Dub Poetry exponent Benjamin Zephaniah), and asked her to autograph a copy of the new Constitution.

COURTESY MANORAMA
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