By Prisca Sam-Duru

The Advisory Board for the Nigeria LNG-sponsored The Nigeria Prize for Literature, has announced “The Son Of The House” by Cheluchi Onyemelukwe-Onuobia as winner of the 2021 edition of The Nigeria Prize for Literature.

Cheluchi Onyemelukwe-Onuobia won $100,000 cash prize for  “The Son Of The House” after beating “The Girl With The Louding Voice” by Abi Dare and “Colours of Hatred” by Obinna Udenwe which were among the three finalists shortlisted in August 2021. The three finalists emerged from a longlist of 11 books that scaled through the screening process out of 202 entries on prose fiction, received for the Prize.

 The announcement was made by the Chair of the Advisory Board for the Prize, Professor Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo at a grand award night held Saturday, October 30, 2021 at the Eko Hotels and Suites Lagos.

‘The Son of the House’ is a profoundly unconventional novel that portrays the lives of two women in different worlds whose paths crossed during captivity. But they soon realised their path had earlier crossed at various points. The stories of Nwabulu, a one-time housemaid and now a successful fashion designer, and Julie, an educated woman who lived through tricks, deceits, and manipulations, are told through a mosaic plot structure against the backdrop of modernity and traditional patriarchy, poverty, and neglect.

According to a statement by the Advisory Board of the Prize, “After a careful scrutiny of the three Novels, the Panel of Judges and the Advisory Board have, in consideration of its profundity of technique and subject matter as a Nigerian family saga, its thematic depth and social relevance as a commentary on the diversity of collective experiences that shape, hold and mar families in postcolonial Nigeria, and its feminist undertones, found Cheluchi Onyemelukwe-Onuobia’s The Son of the House outstanding, and declare it the Winner of the 2021 Nigeria Prize for Literature”.  

The chairperson of the panel of judges, Professor Olutoyin Jegede, is a Professor of Literature in English at the University of Ibadan. Other panel members include Professor Tanimu Abubakar, a Professor of Literature in the Faculty of Art, Ahmadu Bello University, and Dr. Solomon Azumurana, a Senior Lecturer in the Department of English at the University of Lagos.

The International Consultant for this year’s prize, was Tsitsi Dangarembga, an acclaimed Zimbabwean author. Her first novel, Nervous Conditions (1988), was hailed as one of the most important novels of the twentieth century and was included in the BBC’s 2018 list of the 100 books that shaped the world. Her novels, The Book of Not (2006) and This Mournable Body (2018) were longlisted for the Booker Prize 2020. Her plays have been performed at the University of Zimbabwe, and her short musical Kare KareZvako, (Mother’s Day, 2005) was screened at Sundance. Her films have also received international recognition.

The chair of the board, Professor Adimora-Ezeigbo, is a professor of English. She won the 2007 Nigeria Prize for Literature in the Children’s Literature category, alongside Mabel Segun. Other members of the Advisory Board are Professor Olu Obafemi, the 2018 recipient of the Nigerian National Order of Merit (NNOM), playwright, poet and Professor of English at the University of Ilorin, and Professor Ahmed Yerima, a professor of Theatre and Performing Arts, a playwright, theatre director, and a 2006 Laureate of The Nigeria Prize for Literature.

The award which ran concurrently with NLNG’s Prize for Literary Criticism, had Uchechukwu Peter Umezurike, a lone contender, winning The literary criticism cash award of N1 million. He won for his essays: “Postcolonial Ogres in Ngugi Wa Thiong’ O’s Wizard of the Crow”; Land of Cemetery: Funeral images in the poetry of Musa Idris Okpanachi” published in 2018; and “Self-Publishing in the era of military rule in Nigeria, 1985-1999.

The Nigeria Prize for Literature, Africa’s most prestigious literary award, rotates yearly amongst four literary categories: prose fiction, poetry, drama, and children’s literature.