Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie wins 'Best of the Best' Baileys Women's Prize
Jane van Koeverden | CBC | Posted: August 29, 2017 6:32 PM | Last Updated: August 29, 2017
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's novel, Half of a Yellow Sun, won the 2007 Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction and has now been named the "Best of the Best" of all winners in the past decade.
The Baileys Prize celebrated its 20th anniversary by asking former judges to choose the best winning novel from the past 10 years.
Adichie's book is set during Nigeria's Biafran War in the late 1960s. It was praised for being an "important" book and for setting a "benchmark for excellence in fiction writing."
Half of a Yellow Sun beat out 2006 winner On Beauty by Zadie Smith, 2009 winner Home by Marilynne Robinson and 2014 winner A Girl is a Half-formed Thing by Eimear McBride.
Adichie was interviewed by Writers & Company host Eleanor Wachtel in 2009 on Half of a Yellow Sun, as well as her book of stories The Thing Around Your Neck. Take a listen to the author, whose long list of accomplishments also include a MacArthur Genius Grant and a Commonwealth Writers' Prize.