Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has been awarded the Women’s Prize for Fiction ‘Winner of Winners’ for her novel, Half of a Yellow Sun.
The award which is a one-off award marks the culmination of the prize’s year-long 25th-anniversary celebrations, forming a key part of the Reading Women campaign championing 25 years of phenomenal winners.
Chosen in a public vote from a list of all 25 winners, Chimamanda joins other past winners like Zadie Smith, the late Andrea Levy, Lionel Shriver, Rose Tremain and Maggie O’Farrell to walk in the hall of fame.
The Women’s Prize for Fiction is awarded for the best full-length novel of the year written in English and published in the United Kingdom.
The prize showcases excellence, originality, and accessibility in women’s writing, and rewards the winner with a cheque for £30,000 as well as a limited edition bronze statuette known as the ‘Bessie’, created and donated by the artist, Grizel Niven.
Chimamanda’s novel, Half of a Yellow Sun, originally won the Women’s Prize for Fiction (then the Orange Prize) in 2007.
The novel with a set in Nigeria during the Biafran War, takes a look at the end of colonialism, ethnic allegiances, class, race, and female empowerment – and how love can complicate all of these things.
The novel garnered critical and popular acclaim when it was first published in 2006 and was later adapted into a film starring Chiwetel Ejiofor and Thandie Newton in the lead roles in 2013.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie grew up in Nigeria. Her work has been translated into thirty languages and has appeared in numerous publications. Her first novel Purple Hibiscus, published in 2003, was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize in 2005, and won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award.
Half A Yellow Sun Adopted into a Movie
The movie “Half of a Yellow Sun” was shot in 2013 based on Chimamanda’s award-winning novel. The Anglo-Nigerian drama film was directed by ace filmmaker, Biyi Bandele. The film is a historical fiction that follows two sisters who are caught up in the outbreak of the Nigerian Civil War.
It features Chiwetel Ejiofor, Thandie Newton, Onyeka Onwenu, Anika Noni Rose, Joseph Mawle, Genevieve Nnaji, OC Ukeje and John Boyega. The film premiered in the Special Presentation section at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival.
