Chimamanda’s Orange Revolution
Molara Wood
Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie won the 2007 Orange Prize (Wednesday 6th June) – for her Biafran war novel, Half of a Yellow Sun. The revolution had been three years in the making. At the 2004 edition of the prize, Adichie was the new ‘find’ – the youngest and the only debut novelist shortlisted for the prestigious award honouring excellence in Women’s fiction. Her first novel, Purple Hibiscus, went on to become a bestseller and winner of the Commonwealth Writers Best First Book Prize. The 2004 Orange Prize was perhaps the book’s first big splash, and when Andrea Levy won that year for Small Island, it was enough that Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus had also been in the running.
But three years is a long time in publishing. Adichie’s literary stock has risen phenomenally, and her eagerly anticipated second novel, Half of a Yellow Sun, set the writer on an all-conquering second run for the Orange Prize. Half of a Yellow Sun was published in hardback in Britain in 2006; it is also published by Knopf in America and Farafina/Kachifo in Nigeria/West Africa. The book follows several characters: twin sisters Kaneine and Olanna; ‘white Biafran’ Richard; Odenigbo, a professor; and Ugwu, Odenigbo’s houseboy and according to the author, “the soul of the novel.”
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie with her
Orange Prize-winning novel, Half of a Yellow Sun
photograph ©2007 Molara Wood
Released in paperback in the UK in January 2007, Half of a Yellow Sun was picked for the Richard & Judy Book Club (which has a similar impact on sales as selection for the Oprah Book Club in the US does). A television appearance by the author and discussions around her novel followed on the Richard & Judy show in March. With the influential TV couple already calling Half of a Yellow Sun “A Nigerian Gone With The Wind,” a film of the book may not be too far in the future.
But first, there were great leaps to be made, with the announcement (in April) of the shortlist of the award in which Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie signalled her talent and star power three years before. Now styled the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction, the author was shortlisted for the second time. Also on the shortlist, were: Kiran Desai, for her 2006 Man Booker Prize winning novel, The Inheritance of Loss; Rachel Cusk, for Arlington Road; Xiaolu Guo, for A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers; Jane Harris, for The Observations; and Anne Tyler, for Digging to America.
The reclusive Anne Tyler never showed up, but all other short-listed writers were present for readings ahead of the award ceremony. Held at the Purcell Room of London’s South Bank Centre, it was moderated by broadcaster Muriel Gray, chair of the panel of judges. She memorably interviewed the late Fela Anikulapo-Kuti for British television (Channel 4’s music programme, The Tube) in the late 1980s. As the Afrobeat legend recalled the racism he encountered on visiting Britain in the fifties, an apologetic Gray burst into tears on camera.
Gray was all smiles as she introduced the shortlisted authors on 5th June, but managed to get Adichie’s middle name spectacularly wrong, pronouncing it as “Nigochi” – a mistake repeated the following night at the award ceremony. Just how did the ‘zi’ in Ngozi become ‘chi’, one wondered?
If the 29-year-old author noticed, it didn’t show. The paperback edition of Half of a Yellow Sun had sold 187,000 copies in the UK in six months, in one of the bestselling shortlists ever. Readers had not only voted Adichie’s novel their best on the Orange Prize website, British bookmakers William Hill and Ladbrokes made her the odds-on favourite to win. She would be the first African to win the £30,000 award and a limited edition statue called “the Bessie” – created by artist Grizel Niven. The cash prize and statue are anonymously endowed. And as Orange Prize co-founder and honorary director Kate Mosse quipped later about the anonymous donor - contrary to speculation, “It’s not the Queen.”