Chimamanda Adichie Awarded the 2018 PEN Pinter Prize for Her Courage

Everyone’s favorite Nigerian writer, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie just got another laurel of note.

Ms. Adichie has been announced as the winner of the 2018 PEN Pinter Prize. The award which takes its name and legacy from Harold Pinter, the 2005 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate. The PEN Pinter Prize seeks to award writers of “outstanding literary merit,” who are “unflinching, unswerving,” and demonstrate “fierce intellectual determination … to define the real truth of our lives and our societies.”

The 2018 Prize was judged by biographer Antonia Fraser, who is Harold Pinter’s widow; chair of trustees for English PEN Maureen Freely; and writers Philippe Sands, Alex Clark, and Inua Ellams. In selecting Ms. Adichie they spoke of her “refusal to be deterred or detained by the categories of others.” Fraser hailed Adichie as an embodiment of “those qualities of courage and outspokenness which Harold much admired.”

“In this age of the privatised, marketised self, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is the exception who defies the rule,” said Maureen Freely. “Sophisticated beyond measure in her understanding of gender, race, and global inequality, she guides us through the revolving doors of identity politics, liberating us all.”

In her remarks celebrating the win, Ms. Adichie said: “I admired Harold Pinter’s talent, his courage, his lucid dedication to telling his truth, and I am honoured to be given an award in his name.

Adichie will received the Prize on 9 October.

First seen on Brittle Paper.