Renowned author, feminist, and speaker Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is this year’s recipient of the PEN Pinter Prize. As The Guardian reports, the honor, named after the late author Harold Pinter, is presented to a writer of “outstanding literary merit” whose work offers an “unflinching, unswerving” perspective as well as a “fierce intellectual determination … to define the real truth of our lives and our societies.”
Pinter’s wife, historian Antonia Fraser, described Adichie as a writer who encapsulates “those qualities of courage and outspokenness which Harold much admired.”
Maureen Freely, chair of trustees for English PEN stated, “In this age of the privatized, marketized self, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is the exception who defies the rule. Sophisticated beyond measure in her understanding of gender, race, and global inequality, she guides us through the revolving doors of identity politics, liberating us all.”
Adichie will receive the award at a ceremony at the British Library on October 9. “I admired Harold Pinter’s talent, his courage, his lucid dedication to telling his truth, and I am honored to be given an award in his name,” she said.
The ceremony will see Nigeria-born Adichie name her pick for the 2018 International Writer of Courage. The honor goes to a writer “who is active in defence of freedom of expression, often at great risk to their own safety and liberty.”
“The Handmaid’s Tale” author Margaret Atwood and poet Carol Ann Duffy are among the previous PEN Pinter Prize winners.
Adichie has published three novels, a book of short stories, and two feminist manifestos: “Dear Ijeawele, Or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions,” framed as a letter, is a guide on how to raise feminist kids, and “We Should All Be Feminists” is a call-to-action based on Adichie’s 2012 TEDx talk. The latter text was distributed to every 16-year-old in Sweden as part of a gender equality campaign. Beyoncé also sampled the “We Should All Be Feminists” Tedx audio for her song “***Flawless.”
“Half of a Yellow Sun,” Adichie’s Orange Prize-winning second novel, was adapted for the screen in 2013. The book and the film centers on two sisters during the rise and fall of Biafra, a short-lived republic established in eastern Nigeria during the late ’60s.
Adichie’s best-selling third novel, “Americanah,” is being adapted for the small screen as a miniseries thanks to “Black Panther” co-stars Lupita Nyong’o and Danai Gurira. The book follows Ifemelu as she grows up in Nigeria, travels to the United States to attend college, builds her writing career, and returns home as an adult. Throughout her journey she grapples with questions of race and culture, and maintains an intense connection to her first love, Obinze. Nyong’o will play Ifemelu and Gurira will write the project.
“On Monday of Last Week,” Akosua Adoma Owusu’s 2018 short film about the bond between a Nigerian nanny and her artist employer, is based on Adichie’s short story of the same name.
