Gbenro Adesina
A Professor of Law at Babcock University, Ogun State, Cheluchi Onyemelukwe-Onuobia, has been announced the winner of the 2021 Nigerian Prize for Literature for her book, The Son of the House.
The announcement was made by the Chair of the Advisory Board for the prize, Professor Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo, at the award ceremony and public presentation of the winners of the 2021 edition of the three NLNG prizes at Expo Centre, Eko Hotel and Suites, Lagos.
Onyemelukwe-Onuobia’s book edged out Abi Dare’s The Girl with the Louding Voice and Obinna Udenwe’s Colours of Hatred, to clinch the prize.
According to Adimora-Ezeigbo, the novel was chosen not only because it was full of suspense and intrigue but for how it was able to “tell human and indeed universal stories of rural as against urban life, suffering and survival, loss and redemption, decline and renaissance, destruction and reconstruction, and death and rebirth.”
The Son of the House is the story of two Nigerian women, the housemaid Nwabulu and the wealthy Julie. The two live very different lives, but when both are kidnapped and forced to spend days together in a dark, tiny room, they connect and keep hope alive through sharing the stories of their lives and finding common ground.
While the N1m award for the NLNG’s Prize for Literary Criticism went to Uchechukwu Uwazurike, there was no winner for the $100,000 prize for Science.
