In 1991, Nigerian-British author Ben Okri was awarded the Booker Prize for his third novel, The Famished Road, coming ahead of a shortlist that included Martin Amis, Roddy Doyle, Rohinton Mistry, Timothy Mo and William Trevor.
In this short video, Okri speaks of being initially a little overwhelmed by his victory, but jokes that "it compensates for all that solitude, all that suffering and sleeplessness" that comes with being a writer.
In a video that characterises Okri as part of a tradition of modern African writing alongside his fellow Nigerian Chinua Achebe, the author explains that "the African world view is one that does not separate between the world of the living and the world of the dead" - something that he sees as opening up huge new territory for writing. But he resists the tendency to associate literature with any particular nation or region, insisting that "books should be allowed to be free."

The intention of this simple government-sponsored film - which would likely have been distributed widely overseas, but particularly in Africa - is clearly not only to champion Okri as a British success story, but to present him as an example of a Britain that has put its colonial past behind it and which is comfortable with its status as an increasingly multicultural society.