DHAKA: Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has won the US National Critics Book Prize for her novel Americanah.

The writer’s work tells the story of a Nigerian woman who moves to the US to pursue a college education.

In 2008, her second novel, ‘Half of a Yellow Sun’, won the UK’s Orange Prize and Purple Hibiscus was longlisted for the Booker Prize four years earlier.

Other category winners for the US honour included Sheri Fink’s book about Hurricane Katrina.

Her account of the patients, staff and families who took shelter in New Orleans’ Memorial Hospital during the devastating storm took the non-fiction prize.

Frank Bidart won the poetry section for his collection Metaphysical Dog, while Amy Wilentz was honoured with the autobiography award for her account of journeys to Haiti following the 2010 earthquake in the country.

For the first time, a special award was given for a debut writer, crossing all categories.

Anthony Marra was honoured with the prize for his novel ‘A Constellation of Vital Phenomena’.

Adichie’s third novel was also named as one of the New York Times’ top 10 books of 2013, reports the BBC.

In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, the author said her book drew on her own experiences as an African living in the US, particularly with African Americans.

‘I don’t know race in the way an African American knows race… Sometimes it takes an outsider to see something about your own reality that you don’t,’ she said.

BDST: 1230 HRS, MAR 14, 2014