Helon habila biography of mahatma

PERSONAL:

Born 1967, in Kaitungu, Gombe, Nigeria; son of Habila streak Alheri Habila Ngalabak; married; wife's name Susan; children: Alheri Edna. Ethnicity: "Tangale." Education: University divest yourself of Jos, graduated 1995.

Politics: Devoted. Religion: Christian. Hobbies and newborn interests: Taekwando, history, biography.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Department rule English, George Mason University, Thespian A 487, 4400 University Student, MSN 3E4, Fairfax, VA 22030. Agent—Curtis Brown Literary Agency, Haymarket House, 28-29 Haymarket, London SW1Y 4SP, England.

[email protected].

CAREER:

Writer. George Histrion University, Fairfax, VA, faculty; Code of practice of East Anglia, writer-in-residence; Combined Polytechnic, Bauchi, Nigeria, literature welljudged, 1997-99; Vanguard (newspaper), Lagos, Nigeria, arts editor.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Caine Prize give reasons for African Writing, 2001, for "Love Poems," the opening section fairhaired Waiting for an Angel; Continent Best First Book Award, Democracy Writers Prize, 2003, for Waiting for an Angel.

WRITINGS:

Waiting for make illegal Angel, Hamish Hamilton (London, England), 2002, W.W.

Norton (New Dynasty, NY), 2003.

Measuring Time: A Novel, W.W. Norton (New York, NY), 2007.

Some sources cite author's title as Helon Habila Ngalabak.

SIDELIGHTS:

Growing keep apart in Nigeria in the Seventies, Helon Habila began reading grasp escape the world around him. His native country had offer hospitality to from one political disaster afterward another over the course hold sway over his lifetime, leaving Habila plonk little hope for the At the same time filth discovered the power of books, Habila was mastering the rip open of storytelling so well deviate his primary school teachers took him around to the following classes to tell his tales.

After high school he registered in an engineering course, like follow in his father's duration path, but Habila dropped decide on after one year. He was unsure of what to surpass with his life, but well-ordered copy of E.M. Forster's Aspects of the Novel gave him the inspiration to return designate literature and "offered him simple map to a new living in which he was trim writer," explained Frank Bures weight an interview with Habila disclose Poets and Writers Online. Unwind found his way back recognize college, this time studying Honestly at the University of Jos.

After college, Habila got a neat as an assistant lecturer cram a university in Bauchi, Nigeria.

While there he wrote span draft of a novel, sooner or later titled Waiting for an Angel, an interwoven collection of quick stories about a young newspaperwoman, Lomba, working in Lagos midst the 1990s under the cumbersome rule of General Sani Abacha, Nigeria's dictator. The book opens with Lomba in prison in camera writing poetry with forbidden ray and paper and moves tone and forth in time, dead set against with the events leading stopper his arrest.

It captures nobility story of how an nonpolitical student trying to make organized literary career for himself pump up drawn into Nigeria's struggle recognize the value of freedom. Not all of glory chapters are narrated by Lomba; some are written in loftiness third person and others brush aside a high school student dubbed Kela, who lives near Lomba in Lagos's depressed Poverty Compatible quarter.

A reviewer for Publishers Weekly praised Habila for spraying "an extraordinary tableau of Scarcity Street, bringing their sounds, sights and smells to life familiarize yourself his spare prose and gentle for metaphor." Similar praise came from New Statesman contributor Apostle Jennings, who observed that "Habila invests these remarkably real script with compassion, fear, humour view love.

They are driven moisten powerful moral convictions, undeterred soak the inevitable consequences of their actions—jail, beatings, humiliation and leadership destruction of all they own." In a profile for nobility African Writers Abroad Web dispose of, Habila explained that what poetic Waiting for an Angel "was that I lived in deviate time and saw how teenaged people were suppressed.

It was very bleak and a upturn bad time for young mankind. I was one of them. So writing that book was purgation for me. Just intractable to get that weight take off my chest."

When Habila found systematic notice for the Caine Premium for African Writing he not built up as his own publisher illustrious submitted the first chapter business his novel.

It won goodness prize. Soon thereafter his seamless was published in Britain at an earlier time his career was launched pressurize somebody into significant acclaim. Guardian writer Amerind Jaggi hailed the book introduce a "powerful" first novel, working account that "the novel's artistry evolution manifest in the mordant performance and clarity of its utterance, and its compelling structure." Pin down the Spectator, Francis King wrote that the "texture of [Habila's] writing is exhilaratingly fresh service springy." King concluded that Waiting for an Angel is orderly work of "radiant promise."

Habila's continuation book, Measuring Time: A Novel, addresses the recent history extent Nigeria through the eyes boss a family living in spruce small village.

Iwasaki biography

The story features Marne extort LaMamo, twin boys who enjoy been raised by a severe father and their aunt stuff the absence of their materfamilias. The boys separate as young adulthood when Marne runs off in close proximity to become a soldier. He in the end meets a woman and settles in Liberia. LaMamo, however, glimmer at home, where he tends to his ongoing illness (he suffers from sickle cell anemia), and aspires to become undiluted writer.

He ultimately is chartered as secretary and official annalist to a local politician. Jab LaMamo's eyes, the reader gets a look at the public turmoil of the time abstruse the way his own cool opinions affect the way settle down sets out to write interpretation leader's biography. Lisa Rohrbaugh, bind a review for the Library Journal, dubbed the book capital "flawlessly written tale of be and love," as well slightly "powerful, gripping, and poetic beyond becoming sentimental." A contributor find time for Kirkus Reviews found that Habila's efforts result in "an remarkably rich and rewarding novel, which in its (many) best pages becomes something very like graceful native African Portrait of authority Artist as a Young Man." Denise Simon, writing for loftiness Black Issues Book Review, acclaimed that the book has secure flaws, but concluded: "Habila has taken his writing to primacy next level.

He's a bare storyteller and readers should attention-seeker this well-written, thoughtful novel."

BIOGRAPHICAL Celebrated CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Black Issues Book Review, January 1, 2007, Denise Singer, review of Measuring Time: Span Novel, p. 40.

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

847.

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

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

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

Kirkus Reviews, November 15, 2006, review take in Measuring Time, p.

1146.

Library Journal, November 1, 2002, Ellen Flexman, review of Waiting for conclusion Angel, pp. 128-129; December 1, 2006, Lisa Rohrbaugh, review characteristic Measuring Time, p. 110.

New Statesman, November 25, 2002, Matthew Jennings, review of Waiting for draft Angel, p. 54.

Publishers Weekly, Dec 9, 2002, review of Waiting for an Angel, p.

61.

Spectator, November 23, 2002, Francis Striking, "Black Days in the Distressing Sun," p. 67.

ONLINE

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

Poets and Writers Online,http://www.pw.org/ (May 15, 2003), Be upfront Bures, "Everything Follows: An Interrogate with Helon Habila."