₦airaland Forum

Baileys prize crowns Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie as its 'best of the best'

Half of a Yellow Sun has been named the best winner from the last decade of the women’s prize for fiction
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
‘A benchmark for excellence in fiction writing’ … Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

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.
Who is your Bailey of Baileys winner?
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Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun, in which three lives are engulfed by the war in 1960s Nigeria, was named on Tuesday 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.

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/nov/02/baileys-prize-crowns-chimamanda-ngozi-adichie-as-its-best-of-the-best

tonychristopher:
Nwanna ..which side of amichi


This is amichi dude

Yeske2:
Nnaa, ina anata kwa uno? Lols.
Need to see you this xmas or else.. ....

ChimaAdeoye:
[size=13pt]My brother, thanks a lot.
The problem as rightly pointed out is that some people have the lowest form of IQ and they just cannot imagine things done outside of the way they know it.they think if they don't know about something, it does not exist. Unfortunately for them, all they know is the wrong way everything is done in Nigeria.

I remember in 1990s when i returned from USA, i had told someone that the mobile phone technology sweeping the USA then will someday be the greatest tool of bridging the digital backwardness of Africa. Infact, a time will come people will make telephone call from Amichi to USA. The men there argued so blindly that day, asking funny questions as; where will we see electricity required to power landlines, who will fund the wires on the pole,Whose land will the poles pass, will Nitel have a staff office in Amichi, even if they did, who can afford a mobile phone in Amichi etc, etc. they concluded that "America had entered my head" and thus i couldn't reason anymore. While indeed, it was their poor IQ that was preventing them from seeing what almost everybody else in the world had seen by then. Needless to say, i reminded the same men about our argument later when MTN reception reached Amichi and i called them on their phone and spoke to them from USA in 2004!

A similar argument that thought cell phones were an impossible thing is happening here about cows.
The way fulani rears cows and walks them thousands of kilometers is wrong and archaic. Comparing that ancient and outdated way of rearing cows to the modern ranching method is similar to the comparing how chickens are raised in the villages by allowing them to roam about and find whatever it eats,, to a modern poultry way of raising chicken to maximize eggs production and meat. The problem is that a villager that has never seen nor imagined a modern poultry will argue you to death that such isn't possible in Nigeria.[/size]

investnow2013:
Odo Bridge Anambra State Longest bridge!

AnamCity:
Update on the Oil Rig bridge/road. This appears to be much more longer. The real infrastructural development is happening in Anambra.

Scholes007:
how long is it

investnow2013:
According to the former governor Peter Obi.... It might be the longest bridge ever built by any govt in Anambra State!.

FreeGlobe:
Obiano should stop talking and start doing. We need to start seeing completed projects

IGBOSON1:
^^^I'm expecting that at least one each of the flyovers, shopping malls and hotels under construction will be completed and put to use before Christmas as promised! And very soon we should see the cutting of tape on some of those roads and bridges he started their construction soon after being sworn in to office!

Chief Executive Officer of Seven Energy International Limited, Phillip Ihenacho, has disclosed that the company was targeting the development of the Anambra basin for the supply of gas to industries in the eastern and parts of northern Nigeria.
Ihenacho said in an interview in Abuja that Seven Energy was investing substantially on three blocks in basin with hope of supplying gas to power plants and local industries.

He said: "In the 70's a few wells were drilled in the Anambra basin and were subsequently abandoned. Then, the last thing you wanted to find was gas, so the wells were sealed and left. The Basin sits effectively underneath Onitsha, Nnewi, Aba and Owerri all the way up to Enugu which are all areas with substantial light industry, using diesel fuel.

"We have recently farmed into three blocks in the Basin and our plan is to invest in developing gas in that area in order to supply gas to these locations. This will take time, as there has not been that much sub-surface work done in the area to date.
"This is a long-term plan and we hope to use a combination of pipelines and compressed natural gas that can be delivered by road in the interim. We are exploring near-term ways of monetising gas such as compressed natural gas and liquefied natural gas.
"There are CNG players in the market today. Lagos and Port Harcourt are being supplied already. This presents a big opportunity for Seven Energy to assist with the industrialisation in these areas, but also to support power and industry further afield in large cities in the North such as Kaduna and Kano, which can be reached by road deliveries of CNG or LNG".

Ihenacho explained that so far the company has invested over $800million in developing gas infrastructure in its area of operation between Port-Harcourt and Calabar and up to Aba.

"We have invested in pipeline infrastructure which, once we have completed the next phase, will mean we have a pipeline network of over 250 km and a processing plant that can process in excess of 200million standard cubic feet a day of gas. This is a substantial investment and by next year, we will have invested over 1 billion dollars.
"It is not easy to raise capital for infrastructure and the success of our business is essential for Nigeria to continue to attract further investment in the sector. Success will bring further capital.

"We have invested on the basis of long-term off-take agreements with Ibom Power, UNICEM - the Lafarge cement factory and Calabar NIPP and these agreements are 10-20 years in duration. Ideally these contracts are backed up by credit enhancement or guarantee, for example the World Bank is working with us on Calabar NIPP.

"These contracts give us a few anchor customers with which we have long-term off-take contracts. It is very similar to constructing a new building where you look for a few tenants who can take a few floors for a 10-year lease, and once these are in place, you have the confidence to build. Once the building is ready, you can then look for additional tenants".
He said the country needs to "unlock money for the private sector and this can be facilitated by working with organisations like the World Bank and African Development Bank to enhance credit and provide some sort of guarantee to create credit worthy long-term contracts".

Ofodirinwa:
Seven Energy confirms stake in Anambra gas field


http://www.authorityngr.com/2015/11/Seven-Energy-confirms-stake-in-Anambra-gas-field/

jonathanOz:
^^^From the look of things, the three flyovers will still take at least 18 months to be completed. I just hope they do them to standard