Two Nigerian writers have garnered major prizes in literature within the past week.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Renowned Nigerian author Chinua Achebe won the 2007 Man Booker International Prize<\/a> for fiction, which is awarded biannually for a body of work. If you are not familiar with his work here is a little summary from the AP article <\/a>announcing the prize:<\/p>\n The author began work with the Nigerian Broadcasting Co. in Lagos in 1954 and studied broadcasting at the British Broadcasting Corp. in London.<\/p>\n During Nigeria’s 1967-1970 civil war, Achebe’s Ibo people of the eastern region tried to establish an independent Republic of Biafra, and Achebe tried publicize the plight of his people.<\/p>\n Achebe is currently professor of languages and literature at Bard College, New York, and has lectured in universities around the world.<\/p>\n In 2004, he refused to accept Nigeria’s second highest honor, the Commander of the Federal Republic, to protest the state of affairs in his native country. Nigeria held a presidential election in April that marked the first time one elected leader handed over power to another in a country plagued by military rule and dictators since gaining independence from Britain in 1960.<\/p>\n Achebe, who was paralyzed from the waist down after a 1990 car accident, is married with four children.<\/p>\n “Things Fall Apart” has sold more than 10 million copies around the world and has been translated into 50 languages, making Achebe the most translated African writer of all time.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Achebe was not the only Nigeria write to make news in recent weeks.\u00a0 A writer, much his junior, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie won the Organe Prize<\/a>, which is given annually for the best full-length novel by a woman author\u00a0written in English and published in the UK.\u00a0 Here’s a excerpt\u00a0from a interview with Adichie<\/a>:<\/p>\n Adichie resists stereotypical views of Africa. “We have a long history of Africa being seen in ways that are not very complimentary, and in America [where she has been studying for the past 10 years] being seen as an African writer comes with baggage that we don’t necessarily care for. Americans think African writers will write about the exotic, about wildlife, poverty, maybe Aids. They come to Africa and African books with certain expectations. I was told by a professor at Johns Hopkins University that he didn’t believe my first book [Purple Hibiscus, published in 2003] because it was too familiar to him. In other words, I was writing about middle-class Africans who had cars and who weren’t starving to death, and therefore to him it wasn’t authentically African.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \u00a0Adichie makes several other important points in the interview about race, media coverage of Africa, collective memory, and the middle class in African countries.\u00a0 It’s well worth the read.<\/p>\n I also found it particularly interesting this has been framed as a great success for “African” writers, and it is.\u00a0 But is shouldn’t be lost on people that\u00a0both writers are Nigerian; they are both from the same ethnic group–Igbos, and they both have similar subject matter in their work.<\/p>\n If anyone has read the works of either of these authors and would like to add any reviews or discussion of the works in the comments section, feel free.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Two Nigerian writers have garnered major prizes in literature within the past week.\u00a0 Renowned Nigerian author Chinua Achebe won the 2007 Man Booker International Prize for fiction, which is awarded biannually for a body of work. If you are not … Continue reading