Chinua Achebe lands International Booker Award
Chinua Achebe lands
International Booker Award
Nigeria 's Chinua Achebe, hailed as the father of modern African writing, was awarded the £60,000 Man Booker International Prize yesterday. His award capped a triumphant month for Nigerian authors as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie last week landed the Orange Prize, one of the literary world's top awards for women writers. The International Man Booker award is granted every two years to a living author for their achievements in fiction. Elaine Showalter, who headed the judging panel, said the winner had "inaugurated the modern African novel." Achebe beat writers including Ian McEwan and Salman Rushdie to the honour. The honour awarded every two years, will be presented to Achebe at a ceremony in Oxford on 28 June.
Achebe was called "the father of modern African literature" by writer Nadine Gordimer, one of the judges, who added that he is "integral to world literature". Another judge, academic Elaine Showalter, said Achebe had "inaugurated the modern African novel". Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, who recently won the Orange Prize for Fiction, said of Achebe: "He is a remarkable man. The writer and the man. He's what I think writers should be." Others who have been nominated for the prize, which recognises a living writer for their body of work, included Doris Lessing, Philip Roth, Peter Carey and Margaret Atwood. The recipient of the first honour - awarded in 2005 - was Albanian writer Ismail Kadare.
Achebe, who is now 76, is best known for his 1958 debut novel "Things Fall Apart" which has sold 10 million copies worldwide and "Anthills of the Savannah" that was published 30 years later. A diplomat in the short-lived Biafran government in the late 1960s his work is centred mainly on African politics and on how Africans are depicted in the West. Paralysed from the waist down in a 1990 car accident, he has lectured at universities around the world and is currently a professor at Bard College in Annandale, New York State. "What African literature set about to do was to broaden the conception of literature in the world - to include Africa, which wasn't there," Achebe said. "In the stories we tell, it is intended to help us solve the problem of this failure that has overtaken the early sense of joy and happiness when Africans became independent, received their self-determination."
International Booker Award
Nigeria 's Chinua Achebe, hailed as the father of modern African writing, was awarded the £60,000 Man Booker International Prize yesterday. His award capped a triumphant month for Nigerian authors as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie last week landed the Orange Prize, one of the literary world's top awards for women writers. The International Man Booker award is granted every two years to a living author for their achievements in fiction. Elaine Showalter, who headed the judging panel, said the winner had "inaugurated the modern African novel." Achebe beat writers including Ian McEwan and Salman Rushdie to the honour. The honour awarded every two years, will be presented to Achebe at a ceremony in Oxford on 28 June.
Achebe was called "the father of modern African literature" by writer Nadine Gordimer, one of the judges, who added that he is "integral to world literature". Another judge, academic Elaine Showalter, said Achebe had "inaugurated the modern African novel". Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, who recently won the Orange Prize for Fiction, said of Achebe: "He is a remarkable man. The writer and the man. He's what I think writers should be." Others who have been nominated for the prize, which recognises a living writer for their body of work, included Doris Lessing, Philip Roth, Peter Carey and Margaret Atwood. The recipient of the first honour - awarded in 2005 - was Albanian writer Ismail Kadare.
Achebe, who is now 76, is best known for his 1958 debut novel "Things Fall Apart" which has sold 10 million copies worldwide and "Anthills of the Savannah" that was published 30 years later. A diplomat in the short-lived Biafran government in the late 1960s his work is centred mainly on African politics and on how Africans are depicted in the West. Paralysed from the waist down in a 1990 car accident, he has lectured at universities around the world and is currently a professor at Bard College in Annandale, New York State. "What African literature set about to do was to broaden the conception of literature in the world - to include Africa, which wasn't there," Achebe said. "In the stories we tell, it is intended to help us solve the problem of this failure that has overtaken the early sense of joy and happiness when Africans became independent, received their self-determination."
posted by The Edge Studio at
6:00 PM
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