At 14, he won a writing competition at school; another award in his 20s, for his radio play script Rain, took him to London in 1990. He hit the ground running there, publishing his first novel, The Man Who Came in from the Back of Beyond, in 1991.
He went from writing radio plays to stage plays, then novels and short stories; he then directed films and TV and, towards the end of his life, turned to street photography. His subject matter ranged from stories about his new home in England to pieces about the Nigeria he left at a young age.
Biyi Bandele had a penchant for historical subjects, adapting works like Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie's Half of A Yellow Sun, and his own novel Burma Boy set in the second world war. His diverse subject matter makes classification challenging.
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