THE AUTHOR

Oludiran ("Diran") Adebayo was born in London in 1968 to Nigerian parents. After studying law at Oxford University, Diran worked as a journalist on the London newspaper The Voice before working in television as a researcher and assistant producer.  Diran has also written for BBC TV and radio, been a columnist for the New Nation newspaper, and writes frequently on social and cultural issues for national UK newspapers ranging from The Guardian to The Daily Mail. In 2003, he co-edited New Writing 12 (Picador), an anthology that showcases new UK writing.

Diran's fiction has been critically-acclaimed since the release of his first published novel in 1996.  In his fiction, Diran's stylish prose is tempered by a self-critical intelligence that stops it from growing tired or superficial. His sharp eye for current trends and fashions - speech patterns, dress, drugs, music, turns of phrase - make him what one critic calls “the leading writer of the Now Generation.” For all its 'street-wise' rhetoric, Adebayo's fiction is ultimately more interesting for the way in which it rejects the latest fads and fashions. His prose is continually an interrogation and experimentation of what it means to be black in Britain today.  

Diran's perceptive writings on British and black British contemporary culture have also earned him a reputation as an insightful journalist, as his article “Race in Britain” in The Observer testifies.

HIS WORK

Some Kind of Black

The manuscript of Diran’s first novel Some Kind of Black won the inaugural Saga Prize in 1996, set up by the actress and novelist Marsha Hunt for black-British writers, and included a publishing contract – Some Kind of Black subsequently also won the Author's Club Best Novel of the Year award, a Betty Trask Award and a Writers' Guild Award (New Writer of the Year) in 1996. Some Kind of Black tells the story of Dele, an undergraduate moving back and forth between Oxford and London in search of sex, parties and good times who is ultimately forced to assess his relationship with the contradictions of contemporary black British culture and politics.

My Once Upon a Time

Diran’s second novel, My Once Upon a Time (2000), is a modern-day fable set in London's near future.  A tightly structured novel that sits within, while at the same time extending and subverting the conventions of the thriller genre, My Once Upon a Time is a self-reflexive narrative, a detective story that is part sci-fi, part mythical quest and part fairy tale.  Much more than a clever quotation from earlier urban fictions, Adebayo re-invents the English capital city and establishes his reputation as one of the most original artistic talents of his generation.

Diran is currently at work on a screenplay, Burnt, for FilmFour, his third novel (The Ballad of Dizzy and Miss P), and a book of essays, entitled Here is a Protest. He lives in London.

Commentary on Diran’s fiction here is taken from Dr. James Proctor’s critical essay in our Contemporary Writers database.