SALMAN RUSHDIE - NIGERIAN AUTHOR WINS INTERNATIONAL BOOKER

NIGERIAN AUTHOR WINS INTERNATIONAL BOOKER

Chinua Achebe has been awarded the Man Booker international prize for his contribution to fiction.

The Nigerian author picked up the award, which is worth £60,000, for a body of work that includes his first novel, Things Fall Apart, and the Anthills of the Savannath published over 30 years later.

His work inspired Chimamanda Ngozi, who won the Orange Prize for fiction last week for her novel Half a Yellow Sun and his debut novel is seen as a literary classic.

Elaine Showalter, one of the judging panel, said: "In Things Fall Apart and his other fiction set in Nigeria, Chinua Achebe inaugurated the modern African novel.

"He also illuminated the path for writers around the world seeking new words and forms for new realities and societies. We honour his literary example and achievements."

In addition to Achebe, Margaret Atwood, Don DeLillo, Ian McEwan, Salman Rushdie and Philip Roth were nominated for the prize.

The Nigerian author studied at in London during the 1950s and joined the BBC before moving on to the Nigerian Broadcasting Company.

In 1990 he was paralysed from the waist down in a car accident. He currently resides in New York state.