It is not important for me as a writer that you leave a piece of writing of mine with either an agreement or even a resonance with what I have said. What is important is that you leave with the resonance of what you have felt and what you thought in reaction to that.

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.