Focusing on the neglected theme of the slave trade, the former Booker Prize winner decided to rewrite the old work

According to The Guardian, The Last Gift of The Master Artists, a Nigerian writer who won the 1991 Booker Prize for The Hungry Road, will be published this summer. Adapted from his 2008 solo work, The Book of Stars, amplifies the overlooked theme of the slave trade in the older works. Previously, he had adapted Camus's "The Outsider" into an English version of the stage play, hoping to give the Arab who was shot by Meursault in the story a chance to "speak up".

The author | Shen Lu

Recently, 1991 Booker Prize winner Ben Oakrie publicly announced that he had spent five years rewriting the published novel "The Book of Stars", which paid more attention to the historical transatlantic slave trade and renamed "The Last Gift of the Art Magnate". It is reported that the book will meet readers this summer.

The Last Gift of the Great Master of Art in English.

The original Book of Stars is a novel published by the Nigerian author in 2008. Set against the backdrop of the author's native Africa, the book tells the delicate story of how princes and maidens were tested in this land of oracles and found the essence of life in love and rebirth. According to Oak ray, if the original work is a labor in the name of love, which is easier to interpret as a fairy tale, then the new adaptation is a deliberate precipitated work. He tried to wrap the particular materials of the slave trade in a less expressive coat, and subtly drew the reader's attention to the subject. After all, all the best fairy tales provide a mirror for the darkness and horror of the world.

"It's a difficult and painful process, and I still want the book to retain its original magic and innocence, but I want to give it some political color." The whole story is set before the slave trade began, when everything after that was foreshadowed. Oakry said he never wanted to reread his novels "because he didn't like to always look back." But after the book of stars was published, he was acutely aware of the feedback he received from readers that people did not seem to grasp the other key theme he was trying to express in the book, namely the hint of the coming slave trade. "Readers aren't stupid, and if they don't want to notice certain details, there must be a reason."

The head of the book's publisher, Head of Zeus, analyzed: "The 2008 original does not explicitly refer to the problem of slavery, nor does it treat it as an allegorical existence. Today, people are increasingly daring to face up to the injustices of history, and this republishment may be an opportunity to correct the original. In response, Oakry acknowledges that readers' perspectives have indeed changed in recent years, but he believes that this is only the appearance, and more importantly, from Brexit to the outbreak of the new crown epidemic, from the "Black Lives Matter" movement to the rise of new feminism, it is these are the things that make today's readers more willing to open up to sensitive topics.

It is worth noting that in the literary world, it is not common to rewrite published novels on a large scale, both because the actual returns of this move are limited, but also because of the tedious process of rewriting the original work, such as applying for a new ISBN. But there have been writers in history who have made similar attempts. James Joyce had rewritten Portrait of a Young Artist, albeit before the book was officially published. Charles Dickens made extensive revisions to Orphans of the Mist after receiving a letter from a Jewish woman complaining about the depiction of anti-Semitism in her work. Compared with the rewriting of literary works, it seems that the re-editing of controversial scenes in popular movies by film and television directors seems to be more acceptable to audiences.

It is reported that Oakry was also keen to adapt Camus's "The Outsider" and put it on the English stage. His African identity led him to pay special attention to the colonial history context of Camus's novels. In The Outsider, the protagonist Meursault is sentenced to death for shooting an Arab, but does not seem to show any remorse for this. Oakry said that the original intention of his adaptation was to give the nameless Arab a chance to "speak up", and traveled specifically to France to get the consent of Camus's daughter Catherine. "The original treatment of the Arab character was closely related to the Islamophobia that was prevalent at the time, but in today's context, it was very difficult for you to get an Arab actor on stage and not let him speak." Oaklay also cautions that perhaps we have to ponder whether the silence of the Arabs presented in The Outsider somehow explains the anger of the Arabs sixty years later.

Growing up during the Nigerian Civil War in the 1960s, Oakry studied comparative literature at the University of Essex in the United Kingdom on a government scholarship. But two years later the government began defaulting on scholarships, and he could only make money by writing short stories. In 1988, his second collection of short stories was shortlisted for the Guardian Award for Fiction. Three years later, at the age of thirty-two, he became the youngest Booker Prize winner of all time for Hungry Road. Although he gradually entered the public eye in the following decades, he was still often reminded of his racial identity. "For a while, it was even difficult for me to call a taxi on the side of the road, because of the color and race of the people, I encountered a lot of unpleasant things, and many things even my friends had a hard time believing," he lamented. ”

Resources:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/mar/19/booker-winner-ben-okri-rewrites-published-novel-to-drive-home-message-on-slavery

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2018/sep/06/ben-okri-camus-etranger-theatre

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2022/jan/05/a-moment-that-changed-me-ben-okri-realising-my-dream-to-become-a-novelist-at-the-age-of-19

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2007/aug/19/fiction.benokri