Africa’s foremost scholar of Oral Literature and award-winning novelist, Prof. Isidore Okpewho, has
passed on at 74.
The
Distinguished Professor at State University of New York, died
peacefully on Sunday, September 4th, surrounded by family members at a
hospital in
Binghamton, a town in Upstate New York where he had lived and taught
since 1991.
His teaching career spanned University of New York at
Buffalo (1974-76), University of Ibadan (1976-90), Harvard University
(1990-91), and State University of New York at Binghamton.
Born on November 9,
1941 in Agbor, Delta State, Nigeria, Okpewho grew up in Asaba, his
maternal hometown, where he attended St Patrick’s College, Asaba. He
proceeded to the University College, Ibadan, for his university
education. He graduated with a First Class Honours in Classics, and
moved on to launch a glorious career: first in publishing at Longman
Publishers, and then as an academic after obtaining his PhD from the
University of Denver, USA. He crowned his certification with a D.Litt
from University of London.
He
was a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in
1982, Alezander von Humboldt Foundation in 1982, Center for Advanced
Study in the Behavioral Sciences in 1988, the W.E.B Du Bois Institute in
1990, National Humanities Center in 1997, 2003 Guggenheim Fellowship/
Okpewho won the 1976
African Arts Prize for Literature and 1993 Commonwealth Writers' Prize
Best Book Africa. His four novels, The Victims, The Last Duty, Tides,
and Call me by my Rightful Name are widely studied in Africa and other
parts of the world, with some of them translated into major world
languages.
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