A Guyanese woman who is now based in Nigeria has again won the Common-wealth Best Book prize for the African region.
The Commonwealth Foundation said Karen King-Aribisala’s Hangman’s Game is “a densely layered, challenging ambitious work of fiction” which weaves together two distinct historical moments: the slave revolt of 1823 in British Guiana and the heroic resistance to military authoritarian rule inflicted on contemporary Nigeria. This is the second time King-Aribisala has won the Common-wealth Writer’s Prize, having won the Best First Book award in the African region, in 1999 for her collection of short stories Our Wife and Other Stories.
“I am of course delighted and excited to win the Regional Prize for Africa…but particularly because the very notion of the Commonwealth has afforded me the opportunity to voice Africa’s pain, Africa’s joy” the Foundation quoted King-Aribisala as saying.
Born in Guyana, King-Aribisala has travelled widely. She was educated in Guyana, Barbados, Italy, Nigeria and England and is now living and working in Nigeria where she is Professor of English at the University of Lagos. King-Aribisala writes both fiction and non-fiction. She has published several short stories and poems in various journals such as Wasafiri, Presence Africaine, The Griot and Bim. Her second work Kicking Tongues is a blend of poetry and prose where she transposes Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales to modern-day Nigeria. King-Aribisala has received a number of awards including two James Michener Fellowships for Creative Writing at the University of Miami, a Ford Foundation Grant and British Council grants.
The Commonwealth Writer’s Prize is awarded annually and aims to reward the best in Commonwealth fiction written in English, by both established and new writers, and to take their work to a wider audience.
