Nigerian novelist appointed a judge for the 2017 Man Booker International prize

Nigerian novelist Chika Unigwe has been announced as as one of the judges for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize.

Recently appointed as a Professor of creative writing at Brown University, Chika Unigwe will join Edinburgh International Book Festival director Nick Barley who is the chair of the judging panel, translator Daniel Hahn, award-winning poet Helen Mort, Turkish author and academic Elif Shafak.

We are delighted to see all these brilliant authors on the list! What a wonderful team.

South Korean authorHan Kang was awarded 2016 Man Booker International Prize for fiction, for her novel The Vegetarian. Previous winners of the Man Booker International include Philip Roth, Chinua Achebe and László Krasznahorkai.

On Black Sister’s Street, Unigwe's book about African prostitutes living and working in Belgium, went on to win the Nigeria Prize for Literature in 2012.

Unigwe was listed as one of the Sub-Saharan African writers aged under 40 with potential and talent to define future trends in African literature.

She lived in Turnhout, Belgium, with her husband and four children. She emigrated to the United States in 2013.

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