Chigozie Obioma

Born in Akure, Nigeria, in 1986, Chigozie Obioma is the author of three novels: The Fishermen (2015), An Orchestra of Minorities (2019) and The Road to the Country (2024). 

Obioma was named one of Foreign Policy magazine’s 100 Leading Global Thinkers in 2015, after the huge impact of his debut novel, The Fishermen. The book won the inaugural Financial Times/Oppenheimer Funds Emerging Voices Award for Fiction; the NAACP Image Awards for Outstanding Literary Work – Debut Author; and the Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction [Los Angeles Times Book Prizes]. The novel was also shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2015, as well as for several other prizes in the UK and US. 

His second novel, An Orchestra of Minorities, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2019. Obioma was a Booker Prize judge two years later, in 2021. He is the Helen S. Lanier Professor of Creative Writing and English at the University of Georgia, and is one of 12 siblings – with seven brothers and four sisters.