Chigozie Obioma bags Emerging Voices Fiction Award

Chigozie Obioma has won the 2015 FT/OppenheimerFunds Emerging Voices Award for his debut novel, ‘The Fishermen.’ The award was launched this year by the Financial Times and OppenheimerFunds to identify and reward talent among multiple countries and regions in the developing world.  This year, the awards recognised artists from Latin America and the Caribbean, filmmakers […]

Chigozie Obioma has won the 2015 FT/OppenheimerFunds Emerging Voices Award for his debut novel, ‘The Fishermen.’
The award was launched this year by the Financial Times and OppenheimerFunds to identify and reward talent among multiple countries and regions in the developing world. 
This year, the awards recognised artists from Latin America and the Caribbean, filmmakers from Asia-Pacific and writers from Africa and the Middle East.      
The winners were Obioma, Yuhang Ho of Malaysia for his film ‘Trespassed,’ and Cristina Planas of Peru.
“I’m very honoured to be here and to be named the winner – are you serious? Are you sure it’s not a mistake?” Obioma joked in an interview with the Financial Times’ Michael Skapinker after the ceremony.
‘The Fishermen’ is the story of the close relationship of four young brothers who defy their authoritarian father by fishing in the Omi-Ala, a once-sacred but now polluted river. The brothers encounter a madman who prophesies that one of them will be killed by a fisherman, and the condemned boy becomes convinced that one of his brothers will be responsible.
Obioma says the inspiration for the book was the loneliness he felt while he was studying in Cyprus, away from his family for the first time.
“Cyprus is very far from Nigeria,” he says. “I come from a family of 12 children, and I have seven brothers. When we were growing up, I didn’t have any friends, because we were so complete that there was no need to have a friend. So when I uprooted myself to another country I was missing them so much, and I wanted to write a tribute.”
The FT/OppenheimerFunds Emerging Voices Fiction Prize was open to works published in English by writers from Africa and the Middle East this year, and nine of the 10 authors featured in the fiction long-list were from Africa.
The three finalists were Obioma – who was also shortlisted for the 2015 Man Booker Prize  recently – Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor (Kenya), for ‘Dust’ and Scholastique Mukasonga (Rwanda), for ‘Our Lady of the Nile.’