Nigerian author bags Orange for fiction

The awards ceremony at the Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London held on 6 June 2007, was hosted by Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction Co-Founder and Honorary Director, Kate Mosse. The 2007 Chair of Judges, Muriel Gray, presented the Adichie with the £30,000 prize and the ‘Bessie', a limited edition bronze figurine. Both were anonymously donated.

Gray said: “The judges and I were hugely impressed by the power, ambition and skill of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's novel. It's astonishing, not just in the skillful subject matter, but in the brilliance of its accessibility. This is a moving and important book by an incredibly exciting author.”

Pippa Dunn, Brand Marketing Director for Orange UK, commented: “The Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction goes from strength to strength and we are delighted to be able to support such a powerful platform for the promotion of outstanding international fiction written by women. This year has seen another exceptional shortlist, but in the end, there can be only one winner – many congratulations to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.”

The award was set up in 1996 to celebrate and promote fiction written by women throughout the world to the widest range of readers possible. The Orange Prize is awarded to the best novel of the year written in English by a woman.

The judges for the 2007 Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction:

Muriel Gray (Chair), Writer & Broadcaster
Kathryn Hughes, Historian & Critic
Maya Jaggi, Critic & Journalist
Marian Keyes, Author
Kate Saunders, Writer & Journalist

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was born in Nigeria in 1977. She is from Abba, in Anambra State, but grew up in the university town of Nsukka. Her first novel Purple Hibiscus was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2004 and the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for debut fiction. Half of a Yellow Sun was selected for The Richard and Judy Book Club 2007.

Half of a Yellow Sun

Half of a Yellow Sun is set in Nigeria during the 1960s, at the time of the vicious Nigeria-Biafra war in which more than a million people died and thousands were massacred in cold blood.

Three characters are swept up in the rapidly unfolding political events. Ugwu, a boy from a poor village, is employed as a houseboy for a university lecturer. Olanna, a young, middle-class woman, has come to live with the professor, abandoning her privileged life in Lagos for a dusty university town and the charismatic idealism of her new lover. Richard is a tall, shy Englishman, in thrall to Olanna's twin sister Kainene, who refuses to belong to anyone.

They are propelled into events that will pull them apart and bring them together in the most unexpected ways. As Nigerian troops advance and they run for their lives, their ideals – and their loyalties to each other – are severely tested. This novel is about Africa, about moral responsibility, the end of colonialism, ethnic allegiances, class and race and about how love can complicate all these things.

Previous winners of the Orange Prize are Zadie Smith for On Beauty (2006), Lionel Shriver for We Need to Talk About Kevin (2005), Andrea Levy for Small Island (2004), Valerie Martin for Property (2003), Ann Patchett for Bel Canto (2002), Kate Grenville for The Idea of Perfection (2001), Linda Grant for When I Lived in Modern Times (2000), Suzanne Berne for A Crime in the Neighbourhood (1999), Carol Shields for Larry's Party (1998), Anne Michaels for Fugitive Pieces (1997), and Helen Dunmore for A Spell of Winter (1996).

Award for new writers

The awards ceremony also saw the announcement of the 2007 Orange Broadband Award for New Writers, presented to Karen Connelly for her novel The Lizard Cage (Harvill Secker). She won a £10,000 bursary, provided by Arts Council England. Established in 2005 as part of the Orange Prize 10th year celebrations, the emphasis of the Orange Broadband Award for New Writers is on emerging talent and the evidence of future potential.