Nigeria’s relationship with Booker Prize has continued to deepen with last week’s long listing of novelist Ayobami Adebayo’s second book, titled, A Spell of Good Things. Her first, titled, Stay With Me, in 2019, won the 9mobile Prize for Literature and the Prix Les Afriques in 2020.

In 2017, she was shortlisted for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction. The same year, she won The Future Awards Africa (Arts and Culture).

She was shortlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize in 2018. She becomes the fifth Nigerian writer to be so nominated. However, only Ben Okri with his novel, The Famished Road, won in 1991.

Other Nigerian writers that have been nominated but did not win are: Chinua Achebe with Anthills of the Savannah ( 1987), Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie (Purple Hibiscus, 2004) and Chigozie Obioma who has been nominated twice (The Fishermen, 2015 and An Orchestra of Minorities (2019). However, Achebe was named winner of the 2007 Man Booker International Prize.

In 2019, the Nigerian-born British academic and novelist, Bernardine Anne Mobolaji Evaristo, was a joint winner with Margaret Atwood whose The Testaments, became only the fourth novelist to win the prize twice. Evaristo with Girl, Woman, Other, became the first black female novelist to win.

The jury said A Spell of Good Things is an examination of class and desire in modern-day Nigeria. While Eniola’s poverty prevents him from getting the education he desperately wants, Wuraola finds that wealth is no barrier against life’s harsher realities. A powerful, staggering read. To

Also on this year’s longlist with Adebayo are: Old God’s Time by Sebastian Barry, Study for Obedience by Sarah Bernstein, If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffrey, How To Build a Boat by Elaine Feeney, This Other Eden by Paul Harding.

Others are Pearl by Siân Hughes, All the Little Bird-Hearts by Viktoria Lloyd-Barlow, Prophet Song by Paul Lynch, In Ascension by Martin MacInnes, Western Lane by Chetna Maroo, The Bee Sting by Paul Murray and The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng.

The Booker Prize is Britain’s most prestigious literary prize open to all writers with books published in the United Kingdom and Ireland.

A statement by the administrator of the prize said, “Ten writers are recognised by the Booker Prize for the first time, while the three other authors have seven previous Booker nominations between them.

“The longlist also includes four debut novelists, writers from seven countries across four continents, as well as four Irish writers, who make up a third of the longlist for the first time.”

The chair of the 2023 panel, Esi Edugyan, who is a novelist and has been twice-shortlisted for Prize, is joined by actor, writer and director Adjoa Andoh; poet, lecturer, editor and critic Mary Jean Chan; Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and Shakespeare specialist James Shapiro; and actor and writer Robert Webb.

Commenting on the longlist, Edugyan said, “we read 163 novels across seven months, and in that time whole worlds opened to us. We were transported to early 20th-century Maine and Penang, to the vibrant streets of Lagos and the squash courts of London, to the blackest depths of the Atlantic, and into a dystopic Ireland where the terrifying loss of rights comes as a hard warning.

“The list is defined by its freshness – by the irreverence of new voices, by the iconoclasm of established ones. All 13 novels cast new light on what it means to exist in our time, and they do so in original and thrilling ways. Their range is vast, both in subject and form: they shocked us, made us laugh, filled us with anguish, but above all they stayed with us.

“This is a list to excite, challenge, delight, a list to bring wonder. The novels are small revolutions, each seeking to energise and awaken the language. Together – whether historical or contemporary – they offer startling portraits of the current.”

Also, Gaby Wood, Chief Executive of the Booker Prize Foundation, said, “The range of experience, expertise and sensibility among this year’s judges led them to seek novels that both advanced the form and allowed the reader to understand something about the world; books that would have impact and longevity; books that moved them – and above all, books of such excellence and subtlety that the judges looked forward to re-reading them.

“It’s a pleasure to add to the Booker Library this selection of debut novels, new work from established Booker authors, and books by other writers at the peak of their practice who are new to the prize. We hope every reader finds something to love on this year’s list.”

The shortlist of six books will be announced on September 21, 2023. The winner of the £50,000 prize will be announced on November 26.

Adebayo’s A Spell of Good Things is published in Nigeria by Ouida Books run by Lola Shoneyin, who is also a writer.

Over the past seven months, the Booker Prize 2023 judges have read over 160 novels, gradually whittling them down to a longlist of just 13 titles: our ‘Booker Dozen’.

As Chair of judges Esi Edugyan says, “the list is defined by its freshness – by the irreverence of new voices, by the iconoclasm of established ones. All 13 novels cast new light on what it means to exist in our time, and they do so in original and thrilling ways. Their range is vast, both in subject and form: they shocked us, made us laugh, filled us with anguish, but above all they stayed with us. This is a list to excite, challenge, delight, a list to bring wonder.”