Chimamanda Adichie wins fiction prize

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Nigeria’s celebrated writer, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, has added another feather to her cap, as she was recently named the winner of this year’s National Book Critics Circle prize for fiction. SEYI GESINDE reports.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Nigeria’s celebrated writer, has won the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) prize for fiction, with her latest book, “Americanah.”
The awarding institution, the NBCC, globally known for its sound judgment in book assessment, was established in 1974 and has around 600 members worldwide
Another popular writer, Sheri Fink, whose book on Hurricane Katrina, “Five Days at Memorial,” won the  nonfiction award, while the biography winner was Leo Damrosch’s “Jonathan Swift” and Amy Wilentz’s “Farewell, Fred Voodoo” received the autobiography prize.
Other winners at the Thursday event included Frank Bidart’s “Metaphysical Dog” for poetry and Franco Moretti’s “Distant Reading” for criticism.
The critics circle presented its inaugural award for a debut book of any genre, the John Leonard Prize, to Anthony Marra for his novel “A Constellation of Vital Phenomena.” John Leonard died in 2008 and was a longtime reviewer and a founder of the critics circle.
Adichie, who has been globally celebrated for her unique writing skills, was born in Enugu, and grew up the fifth of six children in an Igbo family in Nsukka, in southeastern Nigeria.
She started her writing career in 1997, when she published a collection of poems “Decisions” and a play “For Love of Biafra” in 1998. Five years later, in 2002, she  was shortlisted for the Caine Prize for her short story “You in America.”
In 2003, her story “That Harmattan Morning” was selected as joint winner of the BBC Short Story Awards, and she won the O. Henry prize for “The American Embassy.”
She also won the David T. Wong International Short Story Prize 2002/2003 “PEN Centre Award” and a 2007 Beyond Margins Award for her short story “Half of a Yellow Sun.”
In 2003, Adichie published her first novel, Purple Hibiscus, which received a global acclaim. The following year, it was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction, while in 2005, won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book.
Her second novel, Half of a Yellow Sun, named after the flag of the short-lived nation of Biafra, is set before and during the Biafran War. It was awarded the 2007 Orange Prize for Fiction. Half of a Yellow Sun has been adapted into a film starring Academy Award nominee, Chiwetel Ejiofor and BAFTA award winner, Thandie Newton and is set for release this year.
Her third book, The Thing Around Your Neck released in 2009, is a collection of short stories.
In 2010 she was listed among the authors of The New Yorker′s “20 Under 40” Fiction Issue. Adichie’s story, “Ceiling” was included in the 2011 edition of The Best American Short Stories.
In 2013, she published her third novel, “Americanah” which was selected by the New York Times as one of The 10 Best Books of 2013.