Two authors who had books banned in their home countries featured prominently in the list of 10 nominees for the 2013 Man Booker International Prize, the judging panel said on Thursday. Chinese author Yan Lianke and Russia's Vladimir Sorokin stood out from a list of nominees from nine different countries in the running for the 60,000 pound ($95,000) prize for global writers whose fiction is written in or tr ...

Whitney Houston's mother has told People magazine that she questions her skills as a parent and wonders if she could have saved her superstar daughter from the drug use that played a role in her death. "Was I a good mother?" Cissy Houston, 79, was quoted as telling the celebrity magazine in an advance excerpt released on Wednesday from the magazine's Friday edition. "I still wonder if I could have saved her ...

A prank note in an Australian library declaring that disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong's books would be moved to the fiction section has gone viral on the Internet, with one commentator declaring: "Hell hath no fury like a librarian". "All Non-Fiction Lance Armstrong Books, including 'Lance Armstrong - Images of a Champion', 'The Lance Armstrong Performance Program and 'Lance Armstrong: World's Greatest Cha ...

"Da Vinci Code" author Dan Brown's new novel will be published on May 14, his publisher Doubleday said on Tuesday after a social media puzzle worthy of the writer helped reveal the title. "Inferno" features the return of renowned Harvard symbologist and "Da Vinci Code" protagonist Robert Langdon, and is set in Italy, centering on the literary masterpiece "Dante's Inferno," Doubleday said. It will have a fir ...

Chika Unigwe, author of “On Black Sister’s Street” has emerged winner of this year’s NLNG Nigeria Prize for Literature, carting away the coveted prize of $100,000. The Belgium based Nigerian author was announced the winner of the prize on Thursday at a World Press Conference in Lagos by the Chairman of the Board of panelists chosen to screen entries for this year, Emeritus Professor Ayo Banjo. 'On Black Sis ...

The governor of Rivers State Governor, Mr Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi has called on literary writers across the country to channel their ideas toward issues that would provide solutions to the myriad of problems facing the country. Mr Amaechi made this known while declaring open, the 5th Garden City Literary festival in Port Harcourt on Wednesday. The theme of this year’s literary festival is: Women in literatu ...

BY MYNE WHITMAN! "Bonfires of the gods" is very well written and quite deeply researched; the author shows off his creative chops and interweaves it with hands-on knowledge of the area he is writing about. The story of the various crisis that have ravaged Warri, most recently in the late 1990s is one that has been rarely explored in books, but Andrew Eseimokumo Oki tackles it boldly in this book. Using vari ...

Many artists claim to put their blood, sweat and tears into their work, but Vincent Castiglia means it: he paints with his own blood. The New York painter has a new exhibit, "Resurrection," in Manhattan's Soho neighbourhood that opened on Thursday and is due to run through October. It features a number of Castiglia's paintings from the last 10 years, all of which were created with Castiglia's blood. Castigl ...

A resolution currently being considered by lawmakers in Ogun State, if passed, will enforce a policy that will have workers in the state’s civil service, wear the native adire fabric to their offices, once in a week. A member of the State House of Assembly, Honourable Olayiwola Ojodu representing Abeokuta North State Constituency made this known in Abeokuta, the state capital while declaring open a 2-week A ...

Renowned Nigerian author Prof Chinua Achebe has published his long-awaited memoir, 'There Was a Country' in the United Kingdom today. The much anticipated work is about the brutal three-year Biafran war, in which he acted as roving cultural ambassador for the Biafran Republic when the south-eastern area tried to split from Nigeria in 1967. Prof Achebe has remained silent about his war experience for more th ...