Professor Cheluchi Onyemelukwe-Onuobia, a law lecturer at Babcock University, has won the 2021 NLNG Nigeria Prize for Literature.
The Nigerian-Canadian author and academic was declared winner at a ceremony held in Lagos on Saturday night.
Her 2019 book The Son of the House bested The Girl with the Louding Voice by Abi Dare and Colours of Hatred by Obinna Udenwe.
The award comes with a prize of $100,000.
Announcing the winner, chairman, advisory board of the prize, Prof Akachi Adimorah-Ezeigbo said The Son of the House was declared winner for “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.”
According to Adimorah-Ezeigbo, the journey to declaring a winner started with the receipt of 202 novels, which was pruned to 50, then 25 and 11 before a shortlist of the final three was announced in August.
Meanwhile, the N1m award for the NLNG’s Prize for Literary Criticism went to Uchechukwu Uwazurike.
There was no winner for the prize for science which also comes with a $100,000 prize.
