Chigozie Obioma

Chigozie Obioma is a Nigerian author who has published over 12 books. His novels, The Fishermen (2015) and An Orchestra of Minorities (2019), made it to the shortlist for The Booker Prize. His books have been translated into more than 30 languages.

Chigozie Obioma was born in Akure, Nigeria. He holds B.A. & M.A. from the Cyprus International University and M.F.A. from the University of Michigan.

His novels have won about a dozen prizes, including the FT/Oppenheimer Award for Fiction, an LA Times Book prize, Internationaler Literaturpris, an NAACP Image Award, and have been nominated for many others.

The debut book, The Fishermen, was adapted into an award-winning stage play by Gbolahan Obisesan that played in the UK and South Africa between 2018–2019.

"I was reading a book by Will Durant titled The Story of Civilisation, in which he stresses that a civilization cannot be destroyed from the outside but from within. The idea of writing a story about a close-knit family came up, and then I wanted to explore the idea of an external force that would come from the outside and destroy a united family. On a secondary level, the novel is a commentary on the idea of Nigeria as a nation," Chigozie Obioma said.

Obioma was named one of Foreign Policy’s 100 Leading Global Thinkers of 2015. He has contributed to The Guardian, Virginia Quarterly Review, Paris Review, New York Times, and elsewhere.

Now Chigozie Obioma is the James E. Ryan Associate Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and divides his time between the US and Nigeria.

Photo credit: chigozieobioma.com