Chukwuebuka Ibeh

Chukwuebuka Ibeh on Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize 2024 shortlist

Chukwuebuka Ibeh made the shortlist for the Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize 2024 announced on Thursday, May 30, 2024.

The Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize is an international prize that supports and celebrates the best adventure writing today. The prize first awarded in 2016 named after South African novelist Wilbur Smith and open to writers of any nationality, writing in English, is a production of the Wilbur and Niso Smith Foundation. Smith’s work specialises in historical fiction about the international involvement in Southern Africa across four centuries, seen from the viewpoints of both black and white families.

The longlist for this year’s awards announced on Wednesday, May 1 before the shortlist which features Blessings by Chukwuebuka Ibeh was announced on Thursday. Blessings by Chukwuebuka Ibeh comes with the following blurb;

When Obiefuna’s father witnesses an intimate moment between his teenage son and the family’s apprentice, newly arrived from the nearby village, he banishes Obiefuna to a Christian boarding school marked by strict hierarchy and routine, devastating violence. Utterly alienated from the people he loves, Obiefuna begins a journey of self-discovery and blossoming desire, while his mother Uzoamaka grapples to hold onto her favourite son, her truest friend. Interweaving the perspectives of Obiefuna and his mother Uzoamaka, as they reach towards a future that will hold them both, BLESSINGS is an elegant and exquisitely moving story of love and loneliness. Asking how we can live freely when politics reaches into our hearts and lives, as well as deep into our consciousness, it is a stunning, searing debut.

Responding to the announcement Ibeh tweeted, “I made the shortlist!!! 🥳”

The winner will be announced in a ceremony on September 19.

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