I was born left-handed, but I was made to use my other hand. When I was writing 'Famished Road,' which was very long, I got repetitive stress syndrome. My right wrist collapsed, so I started using my left hand. The prose I wrote with my left hand came out denser, so later on I had to change it.

Against these analyses Okri has always rejected the categorization of his work as magical realism claiming that this categorization is the result of laziness on the part of critics and likening this categorization to the observation that "a horse. His literary influences include Aesop's Fables Arabian Nights Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream and Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

Okri is considered one of the foremost African authors in the post-modern and post-colonial traditions and has been compared favorably with authors such as Salman Rushdie and Gabriel García Márquez.