Pitted against nine other titles – from Zadie
Smith’s On Beauty to Eimear McBride’s A
Girl Is a Half-formed Thing – Chimamanda
Ngozi Adichie’s novel of the Biafran war,
Half of a Yellow Sun, has been named the
best winner of the women’s prize for fiction
of the last decade – by both the public and
a 10-strong judging panel.
The award, now known as the Baileys
women’s prize for fiction, chose to mark its
20th anniversary by asking the chairs of
judges of the past 10 years – including
Joanna Trollope, Shami Chakrabarti and
Daisy Goodwin – to pick their “best of the
best” winner from the last decade. Andrea
Levy’s Small Island, which won the award in
2004, had previously been named the “best
of the best” novel in the prize’s first
decade.
Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun, in which
three lives are engulfed by the war in 1960s
Nigeria, was named yesterday evening as
the judges’ choice, ahead of titles including
Ali Smith’s How to Be Both, Téa Obreht’s
The Tiger’s Wife, and Marilynne Robinson’s
Home.
Author and journalist Muriel Gray, who
chaired the judging panel in 2007 when
Adichie won the award at the age of just 29,
said that “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
spellbinding plot, is an astonishing feat,”
said Gray. “Chimamanda’s achievement
makes Half of a Yellow Sun not just a
worthy winner of this most special of
prizes, but a benchmark for excellence in
fiction writing.”
Adichie was also voted winner of the “best
of the best” accolade by members of the
public, following a fortnight of
programming on Woman’s Hour in which
each chair of judges was interviewed about
the novel they had championed.
Adichie said she had “a lot of respect for
the books that have won [the award] in the
past 10 years and also for the books that
have been shortlisted”.
“This is a prize I have a lot of respect and
admiration for – over the years it’s brought
wonderful literature to a wide readership
that might not have found many of the
books,” said the novelist. “I feel I am in very
good company. To be selected as ‘Best of
the Best’ of the past decade is such an
honour. I’m very grateful and very happy.”
Changing sponsorship has meant that the
honour has been variously known over the
past decade as the Women’s prize for
fiction, the Orange prize for fiction, and the
Orange Broadband prize for fiction before
acquiring its current name in 2014.
The 10 winners of the second decade were:
2006 - On Beauty by Zadie Smith (Chair,
Martha Kearney)
2007 – Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda
Ngozi Adichie (Chair, Muriel Gray)
2008 – The Road Home by Rose Tremain
(Chair, Kirsty Lang)
2009 – Home by Marilynne Robinson
(Chair, Fi Glover)
2010 – The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver
(Chair, Daisy Goodwin)
2011 – The Tiger’s Wife by Téa Obreht
(Chair, Bettany Hughes)
2012 – The Song of Achilles by Madeline
Miller (Chair, Joanna Trollope)
2013 – May We Be Forgiven by AM Homes
(Chair, Miranda Richardson)
2014 – A Girl is a Half-formed Thing by
Eimear McBride (Chair, Helen Fraser)
2015 – How to Be Both by Ali Smith (Chair,
Shami Chakrabarti)
• Culled from theguardian






www.thisdaylive.com/articles/baileys-prize-crowns-chimamanda-ngozi-adichie-as-its-best-of-the-best/224599/

Ar they for real
congrats to her

.

Congrats to her.

Hard work pays big time.

Again an igbo tops the world chart, God bless the Igbo race. Who ever blesses the Igbo race is blessed and who ever curses the Igbo race Is eternally cursed

kettykin:
God bless the Igbo race. Who ever blesses the Igbo race is blessed and who ever curses the Igbo race I'd eternally cursed

I love this part.

Yorubas ll avoid this thread like virus

When one HERO from Anambra dies
10 are been born