A couple of weeks ago, Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was awarded the PEN Pinter Prize, a prize in honor of late Nobel laureate Harold Pinter.
She was presented with the prize on Tuesday, October 9.
At the event, she was presented with the prize at this event and she also delivered an address where she gave a call for people to speak out.
She said she did not believe “that art is a valid reason for evading the responsibilities of citizenship – which are to think clearly, to remain informed, and, sometimes, to act and speak”.
Her lecture was titled “Shut Up and Write” and she said:
Art can illuminate politics. Art can humanise politics. Art can shine the light towards truth. But sometimes that is not enough. Sometimes politics must be engaged with as politics. And this could not be any truer or more urgent today, with the political landscapes of many western countries so blatantly awash in what Harold Pinter called ‘a vast tapestry of lies, upon which we feed’. We must know what is true. And we must call a lie a lie.
Listen to her speech below.