Author Cheluchi Onyemelukwe-Onuobia has been announced as the winner of the $100,000 NLNG Literature Prize for 2021 for her novel, The Son of the House, Okay.ng reports.
The author was declared the winner of the prize by the chairman of the Advisory Board for the Prize, Prof. Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo, at the award ceremony held at Expo Centre, Eko Hotel & Suites, Lagos on Saturday night.
According to Adimora-Ezeigbo, the novel was chosen not only because it is full of suspense and intrigue but for how it is able to “tell human and indeed universal stories of rural as against urban life, suffering and survival, loss and redemption, decline and renaissance, destruction and reconstruction, and death and rebirth.”
“The Son of the House’ is a profoundly unconventional novel that portrays the lives of two women in different worlds whose paths crossed during captivity.
“But they soon realised their path had earlier crossed at various points. The stories of Nwabulu, a one-time housemaid and now a successful fashion designer, and Julie, an educated woman who lived through tricks, deceits and manipulations, are told through a mosaic plot structure against the backdrop of modernity and traditional patriarchy, poverty, and neglect,” she added.
