Man Booker. Chinua Achebe.

"The £60,000 Man Booker International prize goes today to the Nigerian author Chinua Achebe in a decision which confers equal lustre on giver and receiver," writes John Ezard. "In choosing to give the award to a man who is regularly described as the father of modern African literature, the judges have signalled that this new global Booker has achieved the status of an authentic world award in only its second contest."

Also in the Guardian, novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie on Achebe as her own inspiration, a guide to his work and an extract from Things Fall Apart - which was evidently adapted by German director Hans Jürgen Pohland in 1971.

Updated through 6/17.

NYT Book Review senior editor Dwight Garner comments and spotlights Bradford Morrow's 1991 interview with Achebe for Conjunctions.

Update, 6/17: "[I]t does seem as if African literature is at last getting its place in the sun," writes Paul Harris, who talks with Achebe for the Observer. "Achebe's award followed hard on the heels of fellow Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie scooping the Orange award for fiction with Half of a Yellow Sun and the success of Ishmael Beah's memoir of being a boy soldier in Sierra Leone. For Achebe it is a long-overdue flowering of success for African works."

Posted by dwhudson at June 13, 2007 9:35 AM