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‘Half of a Yellow Sun’ wins Baileys’ ‘best of the best’

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun (Fourth Estate) has been named the ‘best of the best’ of the second decade of winners of the Baileys (formerly Orange) Women’s Prize for Fiction. Muriel Gray, chair of judges in 2007 when Half of a Yellow Sun originally won the prize, said: ‘While it’s sometimes pompous to call a book “important”, it’s appropriate to say it of Half of a Yellow Sun. For an author, so young at the time of writing, to have been able to tell a tale of such enormous scale in terms of human suffering and the consequences of hatred and division, whilst also gripping the reader with wholly convincing characters and spell binding plot, is an astonishing feat.’ The novel was chosen by the public and a 10-member judging panel. The winner of the ‘best of the best’ from the prize’s first decade was Andrea Levy’s Small Island (Headline). For more information about the prize, click here.

 

Category: International news