Author Adichie Wins Orange Prize

Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has been named winner of the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction.

She beat five other contenders for the £30,000 women-only award, including Kiran Desai, shortlisted for her Booker Prize winner The Inheritance of Loss.

Adichie's novel, Half of a Yellow Sun, is her second work and set during the Biafran War of the 1960s.

The new writer's award worth £10,000 was presented to Karen Connelly for her novel The Lizard Cage.

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Adichie's first novel, Purple Hibiscus, was also shortlisted for the award - formerly known as the Orange Prize for Fiction - in 2004.

Bookmakers Ladbrokes made her favourite to clinch the honour after a flood of bets in recent days.