Award winning writer, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun has topped a list of the last decade’s winners of the Baileys Women’s Fiction Prize.
Adichie won the “Best of the Best” award as part of the celebrations to mark 20 years of the annual £30,000 prize. The Nigerian author won in 2007 for her story, her second novel, set during the Biafran War of the 1960s. Adicihie said she was “grateful and happy”, adding: “This is a prize I have a lot of respect and admiration for.” The 38-year-old novelist continued saying,:
“Over the years it’s [the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction] brought
wonderful literature to a wide readership that might not have found
“Over the years it’s [the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction] brought
wonderful literature to a wide readership that might not have found
many
of the books. “I have a lot of respect
for the books that have won in the past 10 years and also for the books
that have been shortlisted – I feel I am in very good company.”
Other winners of the Baileys Prize from the last decade include Zadie Smith for On Beauty, Rose Tremain for The Road Home and Eimear McBride for A Girl is a Half-formed Thing.
The winner of Best of the Best of the prize’s first decade in 2005 was Andrea Levy’s Small Island, which won the main title in 2004.
Established
in 1996, the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction – first known as the
Orange Prize for Fiction, is awarded to the best novel of the year
written by a woman, with Baileys taking over sponsorship in 2014.
in 1996, the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction – first known as the
Orange Prize for Fiction, is awarded to the best novel of the year
written by a woman, with Baileys taking over sponsorship in 2014.
Adichie’s novel was chosen by the chairs of the judging panels from the last 10 years.
They included the novelist Joanna Trollope, actresses Miranda Richardson and Sheila Hancock and broadcasters Fi Glover, Kirsty Lang and Muriel Gray.
Gray, who chaired the judges the year Adichie won the Baileys Prize, had this to say about her novel: “While it’s sometimes pompous to call a book ‘important’, it’s appropriate to say it of Half of a Yellow Sun.
“For
an author, so young at the time of writing, to have been able to tell a
tale of such enormous scale in terms of human suffering and the
consequences of hatred and division, whilst also gripping the reader
with wholly convincing characters and spell-binding plot, is an
astonishing feat.”
an author, so young at the time of writing, to have been able to tell a
tale of such enormous scale in terms of human suffering and the
consequences of hatred and division, whilst also gripping the reader
with wholly convincing characters and spell-binding plot, is an
astonishing feat.”
Half
of a Yellow Sun tells the story of the Nigerian war through the eyes of
three characters: Olanna, a young woman who abandons her privileged
lifestyle to live with her university professor lover, the shy English
writer Richard and the poor village boy Ugwu.
of a Yellow Sun tells the story of the Nigerian war through the eyes of
three characters: Olanna, a young woman who abandons her privileged
lifestyle to live with her university professor lover, the shy English
writer Richard and the poor village boy Ugwu.
Congratulations to this role model on this great achievement.
