The Chinua Achebe Literary Prize

Proudly Initiated by The Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA).
Participate in Continuing Chinua Achebe’s Literary Legacies.

1930 – 2013

"Let every people bring their gifts to the great festival of the world's cultural harvest and mankind will be all the richer for the variety and distinctiveness of the offerings"

- Chinua Achebe

Born on November 16, 1930, Achebe began his journey to greatness in 1936 when he attended St. Philip`s Central School to receive his primary education. From 1944 to 1947, he attended Government College Umuahia. Thereafter, precisely in 1948, Achebe entered University College, Ibadan, which was an offspring of the University of London. He was just 18 years old. While studying English, history and theology there, the young Achebe, no longer the innocent reader of Treasure Island, Tom Brown`s School Days, The Prisoner of Zenda and David Copperfield at Government College Umuahia, became critical of racial stereotypes in European literature about Africa including Joyce Cary`s Mister Johnson. Thus, he decided that it was time Africans told their own stories.

Let's Celebrate Knowledge and Ingenuity

Chinua Achebe Literary Prizes

What We Intend to Achieve

"If art may dispense with the constraining exactitude of literal truth, it does acquire in return incalculable powers of persuasion in the imagination".

– Chinua Achebe

Let's Continue Chinua Achebe's Literary Legacies