Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has won the US National Book Critics Circle Award for her novel Americanah. The NBCC awards, which is the only US prize judged by critics, has chosen to honour the novel, announcing the “love story, immigrant’s tale and acute snapshot of our times” as the winner of its best novel prize. Americana tells the story of a Nigerian blogger who moves to the US to pursue a college education, and later returns to her home country to meet the man who was her childhood sweetheart.
The book has received rave reviews from across the world. The Telegraph said it was “a brilliant exploration of being African in America.” The Guardian called it “impressive [and] subtle, but not afraid to pull its punches.” Chimamanda’s writing career has seen her won numerous awards. Her first novel, Purple Hibiscus was listed for the Man Booker prize; her second, Half of a Yellow Sun, won the Orange prize. Now her third, the acclaimed Americanah, has beaten Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch to win her one of the most prestigious literary prizes in the US, the NBCC award. Adichie’s third novel was also named as one of the New York Times’ top 10 books of 2013. The writer is also in the running for the UK’s Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction – formerly known as the Orange Prize – for Americanah.
The National Critics Book Prize was first awarded in 1974 and is open to writers of all nationalities whose work has been published in the US.