For the second year running, the £30,000 Orange Broadband prize for fiction has been awarded to a young writer already acquiring prodigious literary celebrity.
Two years younger than last year's winner Zadie Smith and with one book fewer under her belt, Nigerian-born Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, 29, took it for her domestic epic of the Biafra war, Half of a Yellow Sun.
Her triumph vindicated the readers who have bought 187,000 copies since the paperback was published in January, and the bookmakers William Hill who made her odds-on favourite at 13/8.
Everyone who knew her at Francis Ford Coppola's Zoetrope, including me, cannot be more elated. It's a great moment for us all, and we are proud of her achievement. Congrats Chimamanda!
Here is the BBC report on her win and here are some pics from the ceremony by fellow blogger Molara Wood.
4 comments:
Just got the book today, Half of a Yellow Sun.
Start omn it this weekend maybe.
Hi Zafar,
It's been wonderful for me to see that not only Nigerians/Africans are celebrating the Orange win, but ZOE's also. The girl's done good.
MW
Hi OD, do let us know here or through your blog what do you think of the novel.
Hi Molara, thanks for dropping by. The girl has really done good, and she is humble too. She says these things are once in a lifetime kind of things. I guess she will do even better.
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