Achebe Wins Booker Prize

Author of Things Fall Apart honored for his body of work
By Colleen Barry,  Newser Staff
Posted Jun 13, 2007 7:00 AM CDT
Achebe Wins Booker Prize
Nigerian author Chinua Achebe on Oct. 13, 2002, in Frankfurt, Germany. Achebe won the 2007 Man Booker International Prize for fiction in London, Wednesday June 12, 2007, beating nominees such as Philip Roth, Margaret Atwood and Ian McEwan.(AP Photo/Axel Seidemann)   (Associated Press)

Chinua Achebe, author of Things Fall Apart, won the Booker International prize, an award given out every two years to recognize a living writer's body of work. The 76-year-old Nigerian is credited with the creation of the modern African novel and is the most translated African author.

"He's what I think writers should be," one judge averred. He's also a literary critic and a professor at Bard College. The prize, first awarded in 2005 to  Albanian Ismail Kadare, brings its recipient  $120,000. Achebe has  been paralyzed from the waist down since a 1990 car accident. (More fiction stories.)

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