Babajide Okeowo
‘Half of a Yellow Sun’, the best-selling novel from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has fetched her the Women’s Prize for Literature “Winner of Winners,” award.
Chimamanda’s novel emerged the winner over a stellar-lineup which included Zadie Smith, the late Andrea Levy, Lionel Shriver, Rose Tremain, and Maggie O’Farrell, amongst a host of others.
Throughout 2020, thousands of readers embarked on a challenge to read all 25 previous winners of the Prize, joining the Prize’s digital book club to share their thoughts, and downloading the organizers’ newly created online reading guides and exclusive author interviews. Over 8,500 people joined in the public vote in September.
This one-off award marks the culmination of the Prize’s year-long 25-anniversary celebrations, forming a key part of our Reading Women campaign which champions a quarter of a century of phenomenal winners.
Reacting to the development, Chimamanda Adichie said:
“I am especially moved to be voted ‘Winner of Winners’ because this is the Prize that first brought a wide readership to my work – and has also introduced me to the work of many talented writers”.
She will be presented with a silver edition of the Prize’s annual statuette, known as the ‘Bessie’, which was originally created and donated by the artist, Grizel Niven, as part of the gift of an anonymous donor. It will be an online event on December 6, 2020.
While congratulating Adichie, founder, and director of the UK-based prize, Kate Mosse, said she was “thrilled” Half of a Yellow Sun won.
“Our aim has always been to promote and celebrate the classics of tomorrow today and to build a library of exceptional, diverse, outstanding international fiction written by women.
The Reading Women campaign has been the perfect way to introduce a new generation of readers to the brilliance of all of our 25 winners and to honor the phenomenal quality and range of women’s writing from all over the world,” Mosse said.
Half of a Yellow Sun originally won the Women’s Prize for Fiction (then the Orange Prize) in 2007.
Set in Nigeria during the Biafran War, the novel is about the end of colonialism, ethnic allegiances, class, race, and female empowerment – and how love can complicate all of these things.
First published in 2006, it garnered critical and popular acclaim around the world and was adapted into a film starring Chiwetel Ejiofor and Thandie Newton in the lead roles and was released worldwide in 2013.
