South Asia | Australia | Literature

Stella prize 2016 announces shortlist of six books by Australian women

The Stella prize has announced six books by Australian women, including Elizabeth Harrower, Charlotte Wood and Fiona Wright, for their 2016 shortlist. The shortlisted books are Six Bedrooms by Tegan Bennett Daylight, Hope Farm by Peggy Frew, A Few Days in the Country: And Other Stories by Elizabeth Harrower, The World Without Us by Mireille Juchau, The Natural Way of Things by Charlotte Wood and Small Acts of Disappearance: Essays on Hunger by Fiona Wright. The winner of the $50,000 prize will be announced on 19 April. However, each of the six writers has already won $2,000 for being sho

Africa | Nigeria | Literature

Chimamanda Adichie’s “Half of a Yellow Sun” named ‘Best of the Best’ of Baileys Prize

Source: Premium Time

Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has been named ‘Best of the Best’ of the winners of the second decade of the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction. The announcement was made Monday, at a live event in the Piccadilly Theatre in London. The ‘Best of the Best’ was chosen from the ten novels that have won the prize in the past decade. The chairs of the judging panels read from each of the ten prize-winning novels before the ‘Best of the Best’ announcement. Adichie commented; “I have a lot of respect for the books that have won in the past ten years and also fo

International | Literature

Svetlana Alexievich wins 2015 Nobel prize in literature

Source: theguardian

Svetlana Alexievich, the Belarusian writer whose oral histories have recorded thousands of individual voices to map the implosion of the Soviet Union, has won the Nobel prize for literature. The Swedish Academy, announcing her win, praised Alexievich’s “polyphonic writings”, describing them as a “monument to suffering and courage in our time”. She becomes the 14th woman to win the prize since it was first awarded in 1901. The last woman to win, Canada’s Alice Munro, was handed the award in 2013. Speaking by phone to the Swedish broadcaster SVT, Svetlana Alexievich said tha

Middle East | Iran | Educational

6 pervasive misconceptions about Iranian women

Source: The New York Times

The historical narrative of the “woman question” in Iran is an intricate labyrinth, not a story that can be accurately recounted by portraying women as either “oppressed” or “liberated” during a particular historical period. In fact, that audacious history winds through unexpected twists and turns, gains and losses, triumphs and defeats. Yet the complexity of this story is often lost amid misperceptions. The popular version of events goes something like this: During the Pahlavi Monarchy, women were on an upward trajectory. In a nation on the cusp of modernity, women actively par

International | Literature

Ali Smith wins Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction 2015

Source: The Telegraph

It says something about the way prize juries work that Ali Smith’s exceptional novel How to be Both has not won any of the major literary awards for which it has been shortlisted – until now. Anyone can see its virtuosity, but I imagine it's so unusual that it has often split the vote. On Wednesday night, How to be Both won the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction (formerly known as the Orange Prize), and everyone who had championed the book since it was published almost a year ago breathed a sigh of relief. After not winning the Man Booker and not winning the Folio, there was this: fin

Africa | Nigeria | Leadership

9-year-old girl writes detailed book on terrorism

Source: Pangea Today

A 9-year-old girl — a fifth grader — in Nigeria has written a detailed book about the tricky subject of terrorism and its harrowing effects on children. Splendour Joe King was inspired to take on the complex topic after she and her family visited a camp for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Nigeria’s northeast. The region has become a recognized international terrorist hot-spot thanks to the murderous activities of the Nigerian Islamist militant group Boko Haram. The 20-page book, which is filled with illustrations, is set to be launched on June 18 in the Nigerian capital,

International | Activism

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: ‘Fear of causing offence becomes a fetish’

Source: theguardian

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie had acted as co-curator of the festival, along with its director Laszlo Jakab Orsos. And so she had had a front-row seat to the roiling debates about Charlie Hebdo that overshadowed most of the festival’s other events. “There is a general tendency in the United States to define problems of censorship as essentially foreign problems,” Adichie said, in what seemed a gesture towards acknowledging that. Using the contrast between Nigerian and American hospitals as an example, Adichie pointed out that Americans like to be “comfortable”. And she worried that the

Europe | Russia | History

From Bletchley girls to Russian aces: the forgotten women at war

Source: NewStatesman

The Bletchley Girls Tessa Dunlop Hodder & Stoughton, 341pp, £20 Defending the Motherland: the Soviet Women Who Fought Hitler’s Aces Lyuba Vinogradova; translated by Arch Tait MacLehose Press, 349pp, £20 This is real feminist history - work which was unheralded not just because it was top secret, but because women did it. “It was astonishing what young women could be trained to do.” There is a note of surprise in the postwar review of the work that went on at Bletchley Park – for decades a site shrouded in secrecy but now known the world over as the place where t

Europe | U.K. | Literature

Ruth Rendell, crime writer, dies aged 85 – No one can equal Ruth Rendell’s range or accomplishment

Source: theguardian

Ruth Rendell, one of Britain’s best-loved authors, who delighted fans for decades with her dark, intricately plotted crime novels, has died at the age of 85, her publisher has announced. Ruth was unique. No one can equal her range or her accomplishment; no one has earned more respect from her fellow practitioners. The broad church that is current British crime writing owes much to a writer who over a 50-year career consistently demonstrated that the genre can continually reinvent itself, moving in new directions, assuming new concerns and exploring new ways of telling stories. And doing i