Biyi Bandele

Biyi Bandele is a London-based Nigerian playwright and novelist who is known for his often-satirical depictions of African and African-immigrant life. 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.

His plays feature fictional settings in which characters address social, political, and moral issues pertaining to Nigerian life, and he has written fiction works reflecting his experiences as an immigrant living in contemporary England. His theatrical works are characterized by complex dialogue that combines colloquial English with the vocal rhythms of African storytelling and the techniques of European absurdist comedy. Bandele has won several awards for his plays, including the BT Ethnic and Multicultural Award for best play in 2000 for his adaptation of Aphra Behn's seventeenth-century novel Oroonoko.

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); and Oroonoko, an adaptation of Aphra Behn's seventeenth-century novel of the same name. Brixton Stories, Bandele's 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.