Exploits Of Nigerian Writers On Global Stage …As Other African Countries Dominate Literary Prizes In 2021

In spite of all the numerous problems bedevilling the Nigerian literary scene, it could be said that Nigerian literature has come a long way, considering the teeming number of writers that have emerged and the giant achievements of writers China Achebe and Sole Soyinka.
Achebe’s legendary Things Fall Apart has been translated into about 50 languages globally. Soyinka, on the other hand, has done Africa proud by winning the Nobel Prize in 1986. Nigerian writers of the new generation have equally pushed Nigerian literature to the pinnacle by winning some of the most prestigious literary prizes.
Ben Okri won the Booker prize for his The Famished Road in 1991, Helon Habila, Segun Afolabi and E.C Osondu, won the Caine Prize for their Prison story, Monday Morning and Waiting, respectively.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has, like Habila, won the Commonwealth Prize for Literature. She has well won the Orange Prize with her novel, Half of a Yellow Sun.
Beyond setting international literary standards, Nigerian writers have also succeeded more than any group in the country in exporting our culture and tradition to other part of the world. This fact was eloquently stressed by the renowned literary critic, Professor Charles E. Nnolim.
According to him, “Nigeria today stands tall before the international community because of the collective endeavours of her writers that some of the world’s biggest literary awards, including the Nobel, Booker and Goncourt have gone to Africans this year is a sign of the continent’s emergence as a major force in publishing and a region with a direct line to the pressing questions of our time.
“We are witnessing a reawakening of interest in Africa among the European literary world”, said Xavier Garnier, who teaches African literature at Sorbonne in Paris. He described the string of awards for Africans as “Striking”.
They include Tanzania’s Abdulrazak Gurnah becoming a Nobel laureate, South Africa’s Damon Galgut winning Britain’s Booker Prize and 31-year-old Senegalese Mohamed Mbougar Sarr becoming the first writer from sub-Saharan Africa to win France’s top literary award, the Prix Goncourt.
That’s not all, Senegalese writers won this year’s International Booker (David Diop) and Prix Neustadt (Boubacar Boris Diop) while Portugal’s Prix Canoes went to Paulina Chiziane of Mozambique.
These are not token gestures by prize committees to look relevant, experts say. Rather, as Garnier put it, they reflect the Western industry finally recognising a booming literary scene that “no longer really needs recognition”.
Publishing houses have sprouted across Africa in recent years, along with literary reviews, festivals and regional prizes.
“There’s a huge reading public for African writers, and that’s been underlined during the pandemic when we’ve seen the scale of the community as it shifted online”, said Madhu Krishnan, who teaches African literature at Britain’s Bristol University.
“People don’t come out of nowhere. We just don’t always see these smaller worlds from Europe”.
African literature had a previous heyday in the 1950s and 1960s, though it was tied up with politics and decolonisation, embodied by figures like Senegal’s poet/President Leopold Sedar Senghor.
Today, the themes are much broader and writers less concerned with how they are viewed by outsiders.
We’re seeing more experimentation, ecologically engaged texts, African futurism, There’s a lot more variety – a lot more that isn’t concerned with explaining itself to Western audience.

By: Jacob Obinna