Habila won the Music Society of Nigeria (MUSON) national poetry award for his poem "Another Age" in 2000,[9] the same year his short story collection Prison Stories was published.[8] He won the 2001 Caine Prize for a story from that collection, "Love Poems".[10] His first novel, Waiting for an Angel, was published in 2002, and the following year won the
Commonwealth Writers' Prize (Africa Region, Best First Book).[11]
In 2006 he co-edited the
British Council anthology New Writing 14.[15] His second novel, Measuring Time, published in 2007,[16] was nominated for the
Hurston-Wright Legacy Award,[17] the
IMPAC Prize,[18] and in 2008 won the
Virginia Library Foundation Prize for fiction.[19] His third novel, Oil on Water (2010), which deals with environmental pollution in the oil-rich
Nigerian Delta, received generally positive review coverage.
Bernardine Evaristo in The Guardian wrote:[20][21] "Habila's prose perfectly evokes the devastation of the oil-polluted wetlands";
Margaret Busby's review in The Independent said that[22] "Habila has a filmic ability to etch scenes on the imagination", and
Aminatta Forna in The Daily Telegraph concluded:[23] "Habila is a skilful narrator and a master of structure."[24]Oil on Water was shortlisted for prizes including the Pen/Open Book Award,[25] Commonwealth Best Book, Africa Region,[26] and the Orion Book Award.[8] Habila's anthology The Granta Book of the African Short Story came out in September 2011.[27]
Habila is a founding member and currently serves on the advisory board of
African Writers Trust,[28] "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, and to foster knowledge and learning between the two groups."[29][30]
Growing up in a period of political dysfunction and military
dictatorships, Helon Habila as a teenager in the 1980s was motivated to rebel and fight against this notion. Writing became his voice and a means of protest. It provided an avenue to express himself and his beliefs. Many times, he has tried to step away from his usual fight against injustice and write about different unrelated topics. Nevertheless, he has been unable to and stick to writing to reject injustice, oppression, and exploitation.[33]
Cordite publishing company
Cordite Books is a new publishing company jointly owned by Habila and
Parrésia Publishers.[34] Their first project was to make a call for submissions in 2013 for quality crime fiction manuscripts, the best to receive US$1,000 and a publishing deal with distribution across the continent.[35][36]
In his early days, Habila grew up reading Nigerian books in
Hausa and then
Macmillan's
Pacesetters series, which was popular pan-African fiction mostly about crime in urban areas. This resonated with the actual happenings in cities where there is always a fight for power, a struggle to be important and issues of class. This setting has been a recurring scene in his life.[37]
With this interest in crime fiction, Helon noticed a gap in the market as a lot of books in Nigeria were by serious literary writers such as
Chinua Achebe. After that you would only find non-fiction, religious or motivational books. There was hardly any middle ground for entertainment books and that is where Cordite Books fills the gap for crime fiction.[37]
Awards and honors
2000 Music Society of Nigeria (MUSON) national poetry award[38]
"The Making of Habila's 'Waiting For An Angel' — A Review" by Isaac Attah Ogezi (African Writer, 9 September 2009), mentions how his love of literature endeared him to undergraduate lecturers such as
Obiwu, who in his poetry collection Rituals of the Sun referred to Habila and
Toni Kan as his "literary soul-mates".