Achebe wins Booker prize
From News desk
Thursday, June 14, 2007
| •Prof.
Chinua Achebe
Photo: Sun News Publishing | |
|
Nigeria’s literary icon, Prof. Chinua Achebe, has been
awarded a prestigious international award for literature,
beating authors such as Salman Rushdie, Doris Lessing and
Margaret Atwood.
Achebe, whose most famous work is Things Fall Apart (written
in 1958) won the £60,000 (89,000 Euro, $118,000) Man
Booker International Prize, which is awarded for a body of
work in fiction on Wednesday.
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 Man Booker International award is granted every two years
to a living author for their achievements in fiction.
Other authors in the running for the prize, included Ian McEwan,
Peter Carey and John Banville.
Achebe has written more than 20 books, including novels, short
stories, essays and poetry, many of which centre around the
politics of Africa.
Prof. Elaine Showalter, author and academic, who headed the
judging panel, said the winner had "inaugurated the modern
African novel."
Achebe, who is now 76, is best known for his debut novel Things
Fall Apart, which has sold 10 million copies worldwide and
Anthills of the Savannah that was published 30 years later.
Showalter said Things Fall Apart was the first "modern
African novel," adding: "He also illuminated the
path for writers around the world seeking new words and forms
for new realities and societies."
Achebe will be awarded the title on June 28 at a ceremony
in the university city of Oxford.
A diplomat in the short-lived Biafran government in the late
1960s, Achebe’s 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.
He has been an inspiration to many African writers.
Adichie said: "He is a remarkable man ... He's what I
think writers should be."
The first winner of the Man Booker International prize in
2005 was Albanian Ismail Kadare.
|
