Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie wins 2018 PEN Pinter Prize
Chimimanda Ngozi Adichie
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie spoke on literature, citizenship, and 'inhabiting the peripheries' in a lecture called Shut Up and Write: On Art and Citizenship delivered as part of accepting the 2018 PEN Pinter Prize. Adichie announced imprisoned lawyer and human rights activist Waleed Abulkhair as 2018 International Writer of Courage.
Listen to the PEN Pinter ceremony
Adichie, award-winning author of books such as Half of a Yellow Sun, Americanah, and We Should All Be Feminists, was chosen by this year’s judges: President of English PEN Philippe Sands; historian, biographer and widow of Harold Pinter Antonia Fraser; writer and critic Alex Clark; poet, playwright and performer Inua Ellams, and Chair of Judges and Chair of trustees for English PEN Maureen Freely.
Maureen Freely said:
"In this age of the privatised, marketised self, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is the exception who defies the rule. In her gorgeous fictions, but just as much in her TED talks and essays, she refuses to be deterred or detained by the categories of others. Sophisticated beyond measure in her understanding of gender, race, and global inequality, she guides us through the revolving doors of identity politics, liberating us all."
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie said:
"I admired Harold Pinter’s talent, his courage, his lucid dedication to telling his truth, and I am honoured to be given an award in his name."
Currently serving a 15-year prison sentence, Abulkhair is a founding member of the Monitor of Human Rights in Saudi Arabia (MHRSA) and has written for local and international media. Abulkhair has also represented fellow activists and writers, including former PEN Pinter winner Raif Badawi, in court.
In addition to holding the Saudi Arabian government to account for human rights abuses, Abulkhair provided salons for liberal youth to discuss new ideas, after laws around public gatherings were tightened to prevent ‘unbelief’ and ‘deviant thought’. Discussing politics, religion, culture and human rights, he named his salon ‘samood’, meaning ‘resistance’ or ‘steadfastness’. In response to his salons, a judge and several clerics voiced opposition to Abulkhair and demanded that death be the punishment for allowing guests to speaking openly about opposition to religious conservatism.
Tried in Saudi Arabia’s Specialised Criminal Court, Abulkhair was given a 15-year sentence (ten years executed and five years suspended), as well as a 15-year travel ban and a 200,000 Saudi Riyal fine for ‘undermining the regime and officials’, ‘inciting public opinion’ and ‘insulting the judiciary’ through his peaceful activism. Abulkhair refused to apologise in 2015 at the Court of Appeal, and declared he did not recognise the legitimacy of the Specialised Criminal Court. As a result, the judge tightened the sentence to 15 years executed.
The PEN Pinter Prize was established in 2009 by the charity English PEN, which defends freedom of expression and promotes literature, in memory of Nobel-Laureate playwright Harold Pinter. The prize is awarded annually to a writer of outstanding literary merit from Britain, the Republic of Ireland or the Commonwealth who, in the words of Harold Pinter’s Nobel Prize in Literature speech, casts an ‘unflinching, unswerving’ gaze upon the world and shows a ‘fierce intellectual determination … to define the real truth of our lives and our societies’.