Biyi Bandele

Biyi Bandele was born in 1967 in Kafanchan, Nigeria.

He is one of the most prolific Nigerian authors living in Britain today, having authored five novels: The Man Who Came In From the Back of Beyond (1991), The Sympathetic Undertaker: and Other Dreams (1991), The Street (1999), Burma Boy (2007), and The King's Rifle (2009).

He has written plays for the Royal Court Theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Company, and for radio and television. In 1997, Bandele adapted Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart—a critically-acclaimed African novel written in English—for the stage. Two years later, he adapted Aphra Benn’s Oroonoko for the stage.

Bandele has also received several literary awards. In 1989, he won the International Student Playscript Competition for Rain, and in 1994, he was awarded at the London New Play Festival for Two Horsemen. In addition, he was the 1995 recipient of the Wingate Scholarship Award and the 1998 winner of the Peggy Ramsay Award (for stage writing). In 2000, he won the EMMA (BT Ethnic and Multicultural Media Award) for best play for Oroonoko. In 2006, the Independent named Bandele one of Africa’s fifty greatest artists.

Bandele currently lives in London.