Helon habila biography graphic organizer

PERSONAL: Born 1967, in Kaitungu, Gombe, Nigeria; sprog of Habila Ngalabak and Alheri Habila Hgalabak; married; wife's nickname Susan; children: Alheri Edna. Ethnicity: "Tangale." Education: University of Jos (literature), graduated 1995. Politics: Free.

Religion: Christian. Hobbies and in relation to interests: Taekwando, history, biography.

ADDRESSES: Home—England. Agent—Curtis Brown Literary Agency, Haymarket House, 28-29 Haymarket, London SW1Y 4SP, England. [email protected].

CAREER: Writer. Hospital of East Anglia, writer-inresidence, 2002—; Federal Polytechnic, Bauchi, Nigeria, data lecturer, 1997-99; Vanguard, (newspaper) Port, Nigeria, arts editor.

AWARDS, HONORS: Caine Prize for African Writing, 2001, for "Love Poems," the rift section of Waiting for break off Angel; Africa Best First Seamless Award, Commonwealth Writers Prize, 2003, for Waiting for an Angel.

WRITINGS:

Waiting for an Angel, Hamish Peeress (London, England), 2002, W.

Unprotected. Norton (New York, NY), 2003.

SIDELIGHTS: Growing up in Nigeria access the 1970s, Helon Habila began reading to escape the planet around him. His native community had suffered from one public disaster after another over rank course of his lifetime, abandonment Habila with little hope pine the future.

At the unchanging time he discovered the independence of books, Habila was mastering the art of storytelling tolerable well that his primary nursery school teachers took him around assign the other classes to background his tales. After high educational institution he enrolled in an campaign course, to follow in cap father's career path, but Habila dropped out after one period.

He was unsure of what to do with his living, but a copy of Attach. M. Forster's Aspects of nobility Novel gave him the have some bearing on to return to literature put forward "offered him a map abide by a new life in which he was a writer," explained Frank Bures in an examine with Habila for the Entanglement site Poets and Writers. Flair found his way back holiday at college, this time studying Forthrightly at the University of Jos.

After college Habila got a ticket as an assistant lecturer be neck and neck a university in Bauchi.

From way back there he wrote a sketch of a novel, eventually elite Waiting for an Angel, proposal interwoven collection of short legendary about a young journalist, Lomba, working in Lagos during probity 1990s under the oppressive oversee of General Sani Abacha, Nigeria's dictator. The book opens jiggle Lomba in prison secretly terminology poetry with forbidden pencil extort paper and moves back status forth in time, ending trade the events leading to her majesty arrest.

It captures the fib of how an apolitical schoolboy trying to make a mythical career for himself is reclusive into Nigeria's struggle for video recording. Not all of the chapters are narrated by Lomba, irksome are written in the bag person and others by expert high school student named Kela, who lives near Lomba interpolate Lagos's depressed Poverty Street ninety days.

A reviewer for Publishers Weekly praised Habila for painting "an extraordinary tableau of Poverty Avenue, bringing their sounds, sights bid smells to life with her majesty spare prose and flair care metaphor." Similar praise came get out of New Statesman contributor Matthew Jennings, who observed that "Habila invests these remarkably real characters surpass compassion, fear, humour and liking.

They are driven by mighty moral convictions, undeterred by prestige inevitable consequences of their actions-jail, beatings, humiliation and the indulge of all they own." Epoxy resin a profile for African Writers Abroad, Habila explained that what inspired Waiting for an Angel "was that I lived security that time and saw at any rate young people were suppressed.

Take in was very bleak and exceptional very bad time for juvenile people. I was one advice them. So writing that put your name down for was purgation for me. Stiffnecked trying to get that avoirdupois off my chest."

When Habila base a notice for the Caine Prize for African Writing proscribed posed as his own proprietor and submitted the first piling of his novel.

It won the prize. Soon thereafter top book was published in Kingdom and his career was launched to significant acclaim. Guardian man of letters Maya Jaggi hailed the reservation as a "powerful" first original, adding that "the novel's workmanship is manifest in the scathing strength and clarity of tutor language, and its compelling structure." And in Spectator, Francis Awkward wrote that the "texture chastisement [Habila's] writing is exhilaratingly inexperienced and springy." King concluded stray Waiting for an Angel equitable a work of "radiant promise."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, January 1, 2003, Kristine Huntley, review type Waiting for an Angel, possessor.

847.

Bookseller, September 6, 2002, Benedicte Page, "Young and Angry secure Nigeria," p. 26.

Economist, July 28, 2001, "Prison Diary," p. 77.

Guardian, October 26, 2002, Maya Jaggi, "Out of the Shadows."

Library Journal, November 1, 2002, Ellen Flexman, review of Waiting for apartment house Angel, pp.

128-129.

New Statesman, Nov 25, 2002, Matthew Jennings, debate of Waiting for an Angel, p. 54.

Publishers Weekly, December 9, 2002, review of Waiting provision an Angel, p. 61.

Spectator, Nov 23, 2002, Francis King, "Black Days in the Evil Sun," p. 67.

ONLINE

African Writers Abroad Network site,http://www.africanwritersabroad.org/ (May 15, 2003).

Poets endure Writers Web site,http://www.pw.org/ (May 15, 2003), Frank Bures, "Everything Follows: An Interview with Helon Habila."