Sunday Times named Chimamanda, Queen Elizabeth, Rihanna among top 50 women in the UK
Multiple award-winning Nigerian writer, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has been named among Sunday Times’ Women of the Year for 2020. Adichie made the UK Times 50 women list alongside Queen Elizabeth, US Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, singer and entrepreneur, Rihanna; amongst others.
Adichie and the other remarkable women were chosen for being “Inspiring, memorable and sometimes divisive” and for being the “women who stood out in an unforgettable year”
2020 has been a challenging year for so many across the globe including Chimamanda who is still mourning the passing of her beloved father. On the career front however, it’s been a banner year for the award-winning novelist who continues to inspire with her literary works, political and social advocacy. This laudable recognition from The Sunday Times further caps a wonderful year for her.
Earlier in November 2020, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was awarded the Women’s Prize for Fiction ‘Winner of Winners’ for her novel Half of a Yellow Sun, beating the likes of Zadie Smith’s On Beauty and Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk About Kevin.
The Women’s Prize For Fiction is recognized as the most prestigious literary prize awarded to female writers writing in English from anywhere in the world. Adichie also recently won the “Africa Freedom Prize 2020” presented by the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom which was presented to her at a Virtual Ceremony on December 14, 2020. In October 2020, Adichie also released another masterpiece, a short story titled, Zikora, which is her first literary work in seven years.
In her award-winning works, Adichie relentlessly addresses the central social grievances and political challenges of our time.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has bagged nothing less than 15 honourary doctorate degrees from respected universities around the world including Doctor of Letters, honoris causa, from Yale University; Doctor of Humane Letters, Honoris Causa from Georgetown University, Washington DC. Her 2009 TED talk, The Danger of a Single Story, is currently one of the most viewed TED Talks of all time with 7.7 million views.
She was listed by CNN among the ‘Leading Women of 2014’ and was nominated for Forbes Africa ‘Person of the Year’ that same year and the next. In 2015, her novel, Half of a Yellow Sun won the ‘Best of the Best’ in the 20th anniversary of the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction (formerly the Orange Prize for Fiction).
Other women recognized on the Sunday Times list include Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle; German Chancellor, Angela Merkel; First minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon; British Singer Adele; Member of US Congress, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and more.
-The Guardian
