A major landmark in the history of modern African letters, the 2007 Christopher Okigbo Conference, co-sponsored by Harvard, Boston University and UMass Boston, attracted scholars, intellectuals and artists from Africa, Europe and the Americas, including Achebe, Adichie, Brutus, Echeruo, Mazrui, Echeruo, and several writers of the younger generations. In vigorous debates over three packed days, Okigbo’s life and poetry were revisited from a wide diversity of perspectives framed by the theme, “Postcolonial African Literature and the ideals of the Open Society.” This book brings together the fruits of these explorations—50 poignant papers which represent an attestation of the centrality of Okigbo’s art in the perennial image of the artist as a man carries the burden of perennial human quest for fulfillment. A road map to Okigbo scholarship in the twenty-first century, the book opens several new vistas on Okigbo’s world view, themes, aesthetic, and transnational modernism. Currently in press.