46 pages • 1 hour read
Ben OkriIn the Shadow of War
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1983A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Introduction
“In the Shadow of War”
- Genre: Fiction; magical realism
- Originally Published: 1983
- Reading Level/Interest: Lexile 620L; grades 11-12; college/adult
- Structure/Length: Approx. 10 pages
- Protagonist and Central Conflict: As a young boy living during the Nigerian civil war, Omovo follows a veiled woman through the forest to find out if she is a spy, as some soldiers have told him. The soldiers follow her, too, and Omovo witnesses an incident that reveals the horror of war.
- Potential Sensitivity Issues: War violence; civil war; starvation
Ben Okri, Author
- Bio: Born in 1959; Nigerian-born British poet, novelist, essayist, short story writer, anthologist, aphorist, and playwright; work is classified as post-modern/post-colonial with characters and events influenced by Okri’s childhood in Nigeria during the country’s civil war; later works moved from realism to an incorporation of more magical and fantastical elements (magical realism); his short story “In the Shadow of War” was first published in the London magazine West Africa and was revised for publication in the anthology Stars of the New Curfew; winner of numerous national and international prizes, including the Booker Prize for Fiction (1991); Royal Society of Literature (1997); Order of the British Empire (2001)
- Other Works: Stars of the New Curfew (1988); The Famished Road (1991); A Way of Being Free (1997); Starbook (2007); A Time for New Dreams (2011)
