Uzodinma Iweala

Who is Uzodinma Iweala?

Uzodinma Iweala is an author, sociologist and physician who hails from Washington, DC and Nigeria. His debut novel, Beasts of No Nation, is a formation of his thesis work at Harvard. It depicts a child soldier in an unnamed African country. The book, published in 2005, has received considerable critical acclaim from sources like Time Magazine, The New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, The Times, and Rolling Stone.

The son of Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Iweala attended St. Albans School in Washington D.C. and also attended Harvard College at Harvard University earning an A.B., magna cum laude, in English and American Literature and Language in 2004. While at Harvard, Iweala earned the Hoopes Prize and Dorothy Hicks Lee Prize for Outstanding Undergraduate Thesis, 2004; Eager Prize for Best Undergraduate Short Story, 2003; and the Horman Prize for Excellence in Creative Writing, 2003. He is a graduate of Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, class of 2011. He is currently a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University.

He won the New York Public Library's 2006 Young Lions Fiction Award. In 2007, he was named as one of Granta magazine's 20 best young American novelists.