One of Nigeria’s greatest writers and political commentators, Chinua Achebe was honoured yesterday by being awarded the Man Booker Prize for fiction.
In their tribute, the UK Guardian mentions Achebe’s famous essay responding to the racism of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness – “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness” , A critique of Conrad’s work which “dehumanizes Africa” and which he describes as fulfilling the desire “need” [Europe]
in Western psychology to set Africa up as a foil to Europe, as a place of negations at once remote and vaguely familiar, in comparison with which Europe’s own state of spiritual grace will be manifest.
Achebe was chosen from a host of well known literary names such as Margaret Atwood d Michael Ondaatje, Doris Lessing, Philip Roth and Salman Rushdie. Achebe is now the second Nigerian to win a literary award this week following Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie who won the Orange Prize for Literature for a second time with her novel Half of a Yellow Sun.
Tags: Chinua Achebe; Nigeria; Man Booker
