Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has spoken out about the responsibility of authors to engage with politics and “call a lie a lie”, as she accepted the PEN Pinter prize on Tuesday evening.
Awarded to an outstanding writer who shows “the real truth of our lives and our societies” with their work, the prize went this year to the Nigerian novelist who judges described as “sophisticated beyond measure in her understanding of gender, race, and global inequality”.
In her acceptance lecture at the British Library, Adichie said that while writers should not necessarily speak out on political issues, she did not believe “that art is a valid reason for evading the responsibilities of citizenship – which are to think clearly, to remain informed, and, sometimes, to act and speak”.
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