Helon Habila
Helon Ngalabak Habila (born November 1967 in Kaltungo , now Gombe State , Nigeria ) is a writer, poet and lecturer in literature.
Life
Helon Habila grew up with seven siblings in a Christian family in Nigeria where Tangale was spoken. In Gombe he attended elementary school. He graduated from Jos University in 1995 with a bachelor's degree in English literature. He later taught at the Federal Polytechnic Bauchi , after which he moved to Lagos in 1999 , where he worked as a literary journalist.
In 1992 he published the short story Embrace of the Snake and in 1997 a biography about the chief Mai Kaltungo . He published other short stories in 2000 as Prison Stories . He received the Caine Prize for African Writing for the short story Love Poems . He traveled abroad for the first time to attend the award ceremony.
His first novel Waiting for an Angel (2003) tells the story of a writer who was jailed in Nigeria in the 1990s. Measuring Time (2007) is a novel about a family in a Nigerian village. In 2010, Oil on Water , an environmental crime thriller and political thriller about the oil spill in the Niger Delta , was published.
Several African authors influenced his literary work. These include Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka (both Nigeria), Ngugi wa Thiongo (Kenya) and Bessie Head (Botswana).
Helon Habila has lived in Fairfax (USA) with his family since 2001 . He teaches creative writing at George Mason University .
Works
-
Prison Stories . 2000
- Excerpt, trans. Christina Rees, Lara Wiederhold: Love Poems - love poems, in snapshots - snapshots. Anthology. Düsseldorf University Press DUP, 2017, pp. 198–261 (bilingual, English-German)
- Waiting for an Angel: A Novel . 2004
- New Writing 14 . 2006.
- Measuring Time: A Novel . 2007
- Dreams, Miracles, and Jazz: An Anthology of New Africa Fiction . 2007
-
Oil on Water: A Novel . 2010
- Übers. Thomas Brückner: Oil on water . Das Wunderhorn , 2012 ISBN 978-3-88423-391-7
- The Granta Book of the African Short Story , 2011
Awards
- 2001 Caine Prize , Love Poems
- 2003 Commonwealth Writers' Prize , Africa category, Waiting for an Angel
- 2011 Commonwealth Writers' Prize , Shortlist, Oil on Water
- 2012 Die Zeit , The 10 best crime novels of 2012 (2nd place) for oil on water
- 2013 German Crime Prize (2nd place in International Crime) for oil on water
- 2015 Windham – Campbell Literature Prize in the Fictional category.
Web links
- Official website of Helon Habila (English)
- Helon Habila on the marabout page
- Literature by and about Helon Habila in the catalog of the German National Library
Individual evidence
- ↑ Tobias Gohlis: Oil on water: In the mud. Die Zeit, August 2, 2012, accessed October 24, 2012 .
- ↑ Holger Ehling: Oil on water. (PDF) LiteraturNachrichten, 2012, accessed on October 28, 2012 .
- ↑ Julia Grosse: Nigerian author on Niger Delta: Interview with Helon Habila. taz, October 19, 2012, accessed October 24, 2012 .
- ↑ Die Zeit Krimi-Bestliste 2012 , accessed on December 31, 2012
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Habila, Helon |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Habila, Helon Ngalabak (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Nigerian writer, poet and lecturer in literature |
| DATE OF BIRTH | November 1967 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Kaltungo , Nigeria |