Unic Press UK: A Nigerian prolific writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has won the 2018 Edition of the PEN Pinter Prize. The prize was established in 2009 in memory of Harold Pinter – a Nobel-winning playwright.
We are thrilled to announce that author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is winner of the PEN Pinter Prize 2018. She will receive the award at a public ceremony on 9 October @britishlibrary where she will deliver an address. https://t.co/ehTnTMA7gU #ChimamandaNgoziAdichie #PENPinterPrize pic.twitter.com/A2UGFdWKRr
— English PEN (@englishpen) June 12, 2018
In a statement on its website, the English PEN said: “The Prize is awarded annually to a writer from Britain, the Republic of Ireland or the Commonwealth who, in the words of Harold Pinter’s Nobel speech, casts an ‘unflinching, unswerving’ gaze upon the world, and shows a ‘fierce intellectual determination … to define the real truth of our lives and our societies’. The winner must the author of a significant body of plays, poetry, or fiction of outstanding literary merit, written in English. The prize is shared with an international writer of courage selected by English PEN’s Writers at Risk Committee in association with the winner. This half of the prize is awarded to someone who has been persecuted for speaking out about their beliefs.”
Some of the previous recipients.
Year | British Winner | International Winner |
---|---|---|
2017 | Michael Longley | Mahvash Sabet |
2016 | Margaret Atwood | Tutul |
2015 | James Fenton | Raif Badawi |
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (CNA) is “the author of the novels Purple Hibiscus, which won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award; Half of a Yellow Sun, which won the Orange Prize and was a National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist and a New York Times Notable Book; and Americanah, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award and was named one of The New York Times Top Ten Best Books of 2013. Ms. Adichie is also the author of the story collection The Thing Around Your Neck.” Her writings also include a recent book, ‘Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions’, published in 2017.