Africans in the hunt for the Man Booker Prize

It is yet another year and time for the jostle for one of the most prestigious prizes for literature to shape up. During the week, the judges for this year’s Booker Prize released the famous ‘Booker Dozen’, a longlist of 13 novels being considered for the £50, 000 (N15m) prize.Interestingly there are two Africans on […]

It is yet another year and time for the jostle for one of the most prestigious prizes for literature to shape up. During the week, the judges for this year’s Booker Prize released the famous ‘Booker Dozen’, a longlist of 13 novels being considered for the £50, 000 (N15m) prize.
Interestingly there are two Africans on the longlist. One of them is Nigeria’s Chigozie Obioma, who becomes the first Nigerian to be longlisted for the prize since Ben Okri became the youngest winner of the prize in 1991 aged 32. (Okri’s record was broken last year by Eleanor Catton who won the prize at 28).
Obioma, who is currently a professor of Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Nebraska, is longlisted for his debut novel, The Fishermen, published to critical acclaim by ONE/Pushkin Press in 2014.  The story is centred on four brothers growing up in 1990s Nigeria. On a fishing expedition, they meet a mad man known to have the power of prophesy, who told them that one of the brothers will be killed by one of them.
Nigerian writer Helon Habila is full of praise for Obioma’s debut and said in a review published by The Guardian “The Fishermen is an elegy to lost promise, to a golden age squandered, and yet it remains hopeful about the redemptive possibilities of a new generation – what I like to call the “post-nationalist generation”, described as “egrets” in the book: harbingers of a bright future.”
Obioma’s is one of three debut novelists on the shortlist who have managed to edge out heavy weights like Kazuo Ishiguro among others and will fancy his chances of winning the coveted prize.
On the other hand, Morocco’s Laila Lalami’s being longlisted for the prize was not without some drama. In the announcement of the longlist by the Man Booker Prize, she was listed as an American author, something that shocked Lalami, who took to twitter to announce that she is African.
“I am African. It’s an identity I’m often denied but that I will always insist upon,” she said in a tweet. She was born in Rabat but has been living in the US since 1992.
Her novel, The Moor’s Account, is her 3rd novel, following her debut, Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits, and her sophomore, Secret Son.
The Moor’s Account is the imagined memoir of the first black explorer of America. Set in the 14th century, it revolves around a Moroccan slave, Mustafa al-Zamori, who sails with a Spanish conquistador Panifilo de Narveaz to claim America for the Spanish King. But the expedition is ill fated and only four out of six hundred men survive. Zamori’s account of their journey across America has been described as a stunning work of historical fiction.
In his review of the book for The New York Times, Jeffery Renard Allen says, “Some might argue that a good historical novel should peel back the past to reveal what at the deepest level we already know: that black or white, rich or poor, woman or man, Muslim or Christian, we all are capable of being monsters. But “The Moor’s Account” asks something else of fiction. Lalami sees the story as a form of moral and spiritual instruction that can lead to transcendence: “Maybe if our experiences, in all of their glorious, magnificent colors, were somehow added up, they would lead us to the blinding light of the truth.” And “the only thing at once more precious and more fragile than a true story,” she reminds us, “is a free life.”
Lalami, who is a professor of creative writing at the University of California at Riverside, is hoping to be the first Moroccan winner of the prize.
The Booker Prize has previously been open only to writers from Britain and the Commonwealth published in the UK but in the last two years has been open to include American authors.
A shortlist for the 2015 prize will be announced on September 15 and the winner will be announced on October 13.
Since the prize was established in 1969 only one Nigerian, Ben Okri, has won it while Chinua Achebe was awarded the 2007 Man Booker Prize for the body of his works. Last year, hopes of an African triumph were dashed when Zimbabwean novelist Noviolet Bulawayo who made it to the finals lost to Eleanor Catton of New Zealand who clinched the prize for her debut novel, The Luminaries.
This year, Africans will hope for a better outcome.

The long list for the 2015 prize is as follows.
Bill Clegg (U.S.) – Did You Ever Have a Family
Anne Enright (Ireland) – The Green Road
Marlon James (Jamaica) – A Brief History of Seven Killings
Laila Lalami (Morrocco) – ’The Moors Account
Tom McCarthy (U.K.) – Satin Island
Chigozie Obioma (Nigeria) – The Fishermen
Andrew O’Hagan (U.K.) – The Illuminations
Marilynne Robinson (U.S.) – Lila
Anuradha Roy (India) – Sleeping on Jupiter
Sunjeev Sahota (U.K.) – The Year of the Runaways
Anna Smaill (New Zealand) – The Chimes
Anne Tyler (U.S.) – A Spool of Blue Thread
Hanya Yanagihara (U.S.) – A Little Life