Helon Habila Ngalabak (born November 1967) is a Nigerian novelist and poet whose work has earned numerous awards, including the Caine Prize in 2001. Helon Habila was born in Kaltungo, Gombe State, Nigeria. He studied English Language and Literature at the University of Jos and lectured for three years at the Federal Polytechnic in Bauchi.
In 1999, he moved to Lagos to write for Hints magazine before joining Vanguard newspaper as Literary Editor. He migrated to England in 2002, when he was a Chevening Scholar at the University of East Anglia. Habila currently teaches creative writing at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, where he lives with his family.
Habila grew up reading Hausa-language Nigerian books and then Macmillan’s Pacesetters series, which was popular pan-African fiction about urban crime. This connected with current events in cities, where there is constantly a struggle for power, a desire to be significant, and issues of class. This environment has been a reoccurring theme throughout his life.
With his interest in crime fiction, Helon identified a void in the market, as most books in Nigeria were written by serious literary writers such as Chinua Achebe. Following that, you’d only discover nonfiction, religious, or motivational literature. There was little middle ground for entertaining literature, and Cordite literature fills that need for crime fiction.
In 2006, he co-edited the British Council anthology, New Writing 14. His second novel, Measuring Time, released in 2007, received nominations for the Hurston Wright Legacy Award, the IMPAC Prize, and the Virginia Library Foundation Fiction Prize in 2008. His third novel, Oil on Water (2010), on environmental pollution in Nigeria’s oil-rich delta, earned mostly excellent reviews. He also published Waiting for an Angel (2002) and was Winner of the Caine Prize 2001 and the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize 2003.
From July 2013 to June 2014, Habila was a DAAD Fellow in Berlin, Germany. He was appointed chair of the judging panel for the 2016 Etisalat Prize for Literature, alongside Elinor Sisulu and Edwige-Renée Dro. Habila was shortlisted for the Grand Prix of Literary Associations 2019 with his work entitled Travelers.
Habila is a founding member and currently serves on the advisory board of African Writers Trust, “a non-profit entity which seeks to coordinate and bring together African writers in the Diaspora and writers on the continent to promote sharing of skills and other resources, as well as to foster knowledge and learning between the two groups.”
Books
- Prison Stories (2000), Epik Books
- Waiting for an Angel: A Novel, (2004), Penguin Books. ISBN 0-14-101006-1
- New Writing 14, (2006) Granta Books (co-edited with Lavinia Greenlaw).
- Measuring Time: A Novel, (2007), W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0-393-05251-6.
- Dreams, Miracles, and Jazz: An Anthology of New Africa Fiction (2007), Pan Macmillan (co-edited with Kadija George).
- Oil on Water: A Novel (2010), Hamish Hamilton, ISBN 978-0-241-14486-2. Published in the US (2011) by W. W. Norton & Company, ISBN 978-0-393-33964-2
- The Granta Book of the African Short Story (2011), Granta. ISBN 1-84708-247-5; ISBN 978-1-84708-247-3
- The Chibok Girls, (2017), Penguin Books. ISBN 9780241980897,OCLC 960835954
- Travelers: A Novel, (2019) W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-0-393-23959-1
