Author Cheluchi Onyemelukwe-Onuobia has been announced as the winner of the $100,000 NLNG Prize in Literature for 2021.
Her novel, The Son of the House, was declared the winning novel, amongst other shortlisted entries, at the award ceremony on Saturday night.
The Advisory Board for The Nigeria Prize for Literature had announced the shortlist of 11 drawn from 202 books in the running for the 2021 edition of the prize.
The 11 books on the shortlist, included Delusion of Patriots, Give Us Each Day, Imminent River, In The Name of Our Father, Mountain of Yesterday, Neglected, The Colours of Hatred, The Girl with The Louding Voice, The Return of Half- Something, The Son of The House, and Your Church My Shrine.
The judges described the shortlist as fresh approaches to looking at issues, using new and exciting narrative strategies, techniques and well-written organic plots to present topical discussions in realistic ways.
The Nigeria Prize for Literature has since 2004 rewarded eminent writers such as Gabriel Okara (co-winner, 2005, poetry) for The Dreamer, His Vision; Professor Ezenwa Ohaeto, for his volume of poetry, Chants of a Minstrel (co-winner, 2005, poetry); Ahmed Yerima (2005, drama) for his classic, Hard Ground; Mabel Segun (co-winner, 2007, children’s literature) for her collection of short plays Reader’s Theatre; and Professor Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo (co-winner, 2007, children’s literature) with her book, My Cousin Sammy, amongst many more subsequent winners.
The Nigeria Prize for Literature runs concurrently with the Nigeria Prize for Literary Criticism (also sponsored by NLNG), for which four entries were received in 2020. The literary criticism prize carries a monetary value of N1 million.
