Author and professor of Law at the Babcock University, Ogun State, Cheluchi Onyemelukwe-Onuobia, has been announced the winner of the 2021 Nigerian Prize for Literature for her book, Son of the House.
The Chair of the Advisory Board for the prize, Professor Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo, made the disclosure at the award ceremony and public presentation of the winners of the 2021 edition of the three NLNG prizes at Expo Centre, Eko Hotel and Suites, Lagos.
Her work beat Abi Dare’s The Girl with the Louding Voice and Obinna Udenwe’s , Colours of Hatred, to clinch the prize.
In the presentation, Adimora-Ezeigbo, said the novel was chosen not only because it was full of suspense and intrigue but for how it was able to “tell human and indeed universal stories of rural as against urban life, suffering and survival, loss and redemption, decline and renaissance, destruction and reconstruction, and death and rebirth.”
Speaking to Sunday PUNCH, Onyemelukwe said, “I am excited and thrilled. I am even a bit numb. I think that by tomorrow (today), it will sink in a bit more. I am just so thankful. God has been good to me in a different way this year.”
She earlier told our correspondent during an interview that the novel was rejected many times by publishers before it was finally accepted by a Canadian publishing house.
Meanwhile, the N1m award for the NLNG’s Prize for Literary Criticism went to Uchechukwu Uwazurike. However, there was no winner for the $100,000 prize for Science.
