Rajiv Chandrasekaran has been awarded the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction for Imperial Life in the Emerald City, a vivid portrayal of life in Baghdad's Green Zone. The prize is billed as the UK's most prestigious non-fiction literary award. Chandrasekaran served as the former Baghdad bureau chief of The Washington Post.

Click here for more information on Imperial Life in the Emerald City.

Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe has been awarded the 2007 Man Booker International Prize for fiction, awarded every two years for a body of fiction. Achebe, 76, is best known for his first novel, Things Fall Apart (1958), and Anthills of the Savannah, published more than 30 years later. He has written more than 20 books, including novels, short stories, essays and collections of poetry. Other celebrated nominees for the prize included Philip Roth, Margaret Atwood, Salman Rushdie, Carlos Fuentes, and Ian McEwan.

Click here for a complete list of titles by Chinua Achebe.

Random House, Inc. is pleased to welcome Titan Books as one of our newest distribution clients.

Titan Books publishes film/television companion books, graphic novels, and books on scriptwriting. Some of their titles include: Counterfeit Worlds: Philip K. Dick on Film, Spielberg, Truffaut & Me: An Actor's Diary, and Artists on Comics Art.

Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has won the twelfth Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction with her second novel Half of a Yellow Sun. At the awards ceremony on June 6, the Chair of Judges, Muriel Gray said: "The judges and I were hugely impressed by the power, ambition and skill of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's novel. It's astonishing, not just in the skilful subject matter, but in the brilliance of its accessibility."

The novel is set in the 1960s Biafran civil war, during which both Adichie's grandfathers died. The 29-year-old becomes the youngest winner, and the first from Africa.

Click here for more information about Half of a Yellow Sun.

Several Random House, Inc. titles have been awarded the Commonwealth Writer's Prize. Regional Prizes went to Lloyd Jones' Mister Pip for South East Asia and the South Pacific, and both Naeem Murr's The Perfect Man and Hisham Matar's In the Country of Men won the Europe and South Asia prize for Best Book and Best First Book, respectively. Awarded by the Commonwealth Foundation, the annual honor celebrates outstanding writing that makes "a significant contribution to contemporary writing in English." Additional shortlisted titles for Best Book are as follows:

•Regional Africa:
Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Wizard of the Crow by Ngugi wa Thiong'o

•Regional Canada and the Caribbean:
The Emperor's Children by Claire Messud
The View from Castle Rock by Alice Munro

•Regional Europe and South Asia:
Black Swan Green by David Mitchell

Click here for a complete listing of the 2007 Commonwealth Writer's Prize winners and nominees.