Nigeria’s Chika Unigwe to judge Man Booker International Prize

Nigerian novelist, Chika Unigwe has been announced as one of the judges for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize. The panel of five will be chaired by Nick Barley, Director of the Edinburgh International Book Festival. He will be joined by translator, Daniel Hahn, award-winning poet Helen Mort, Turkish author and academic Elif Shafak and […]

Nigerian novelist, Chika Unigwe has been announced as one of the judges for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize.
The panel of five will be chaired by Nick Barley, Director of the Edinburgh International Book Festival. He will be joined by translator, Daniel Hahn, award-winning poet Helen Mort, Turkish author and academic Elif Shafak and Unigwe.
2017 is the second year of the newly evolved Man Booker International Prize, which was originally launched in 2005. The 2017 judging panel will be looking for the best translated fiction book of the year, selected from entries published in the UK between 1 May 2016 and 30 April 2017.
The 2016 prize was won by Korean author Han Kang and her translator Deborah Smith for ‘The Vegetarian.’ The £50,000 prize was split equally between author and translator for the first time.
UK sales of ‘The Vegetarian’ rose six-fold in the week after the prize was announced, rising to 900% of the pre-win weekly sale after three weeks. The effect of the prize on sales in Korea was stratospheric: the Korean edition of ‘The Vegetarian’ had sold 20,000 copies in the decade following publication. Two weeks after the win the Korean publisher had had orders for almost half a million copies.
The ‘Man Booker Dozen’ of 12 or 13 books will be announced in March 2017 and the shortlist of six books in April 2017. The winner will be announced in May 2017.
Chika Unigwe was born in Enugu, Enugu State, Nigeria. She is the author of four novels, including ‘On Black Sisters Street’ (2009, 2011 Jonathan Cape, UK and Random House NY), which won the Nigerian Prize for Literature in 2012, and ‘Night Dancer’ (Jonathan Cape, 2012).  Her short stories and essays have appeared in the New York Times, the Guardian, Guernica, Aeon and many other journals. Her works have been translated into several languages. A recipient of several awards and fellowships, she lives and works in the USA.