Africa's best books and more...
A total of 96 stories will compete for the 2013 Caine Prize for African Writing. The winner will be announced in May this year and stands to receive a cash prize of $15,000. The judges for this year’s prize include Leila Aboulela, award winning Sudanese-born author and winner of the inaugural Caine Prize. This is the first time that a past winner of the Caine Prize will take part in the judging. The judging panel is chaired by art historian and broadcaster Dr Gus Casely-Hayford.
For the third year, Africa Book Club presents its selection of the year’s best books about Africa, or written by African authors. This has been a truly remarkable year – with long awaited comebacks from several of Africa’s greats and exciting debuts.
Our 2012 list includes the top picks from our team of reviewers, that is, books they read and recommended as deserving to be on the list. We also scoured the continent (and, of course, the Internet) to find books about Africa or by African authors that generated the most buzz, received literary awards, or made the bestseller lists.
The Commonwealth Foundation has issued a call for entries for its 2013 Book and Short Story prize competitions. And for the very first time, self-published books and fiction works translated from other languages will be eligible to enter the competition.
Chika Unigwe was today announced the winner of Africa’s richest literature prize, the 2012 Nigeria Prize for Literature. She received a cash prize of $100,000. Unigwe’s book, On Black Sisters Street beat out two other entries that made the final shortlist, namely Only A Canvas (by Olusola Olugbesan) and Onaedo: The Blacksmith’s Daughter (by Ngozi Achebe).
Three writers have made the shortlist for the 2012 Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa. The three – Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo (Nigeria), Sifiso Mzobe (South Africa), and Bridget Pitt (South Africa) will compete for the prize, which is set to be announced on September 8, 2012 at the Civic Center, OzumbaMbadiwe in Nigeria.
South African author André Brink has been longlisted alongside 11 other authors for the Man Booker Prize 2012. Brink, who at 77 is the oldest nominee on the list, was longlisted for his book Philida, which tells the story of a slave who makes a brave escape to gain her freedom. She risks her life by setting off on foot for distant Stellenbosch, in a journey that begins with the small act of saying no.
To celebrate the African novel and its adaptability and resilience, Kwani Trust has announced a one-off new literary prize for African writing. The Kwani? Manuscript Project calls for the submission of unpublished fiction manuscripts from African writers across the continent and in the Diaspora. The prize seeks fresh, original work that explores and challenges the possibilities of the novel.
Nigeria’s Rotimi Babatunde has won the 2012 Caine Prize for African Writing for his short story entitled Bombay’s Republic, which was published in Mirabilia Review’ Vol. 3.9 (Lagos, 2011). Babatunde received a cash prize of £10,000 prize at a dinner held Monday, July 2, 2012 at the Bodleian Library in Oxford.
The shortlist for the 2012 Caine Prize for African Writing was announced this month, and includes five short stories selected from 122 qualifying entries received from 14 African countries. The 2012 finalists are Rotimi Babatunde (Nigeria), Billy Kahora (Kenya), Stanley Kenani (Malawi), Melissa Tandiwe Myambo (Zimbabwe), and Constance Myburgh (South Africa).
Award winning Zambian author, Ellen Banda-Aaku has made the 18-person shortlist for the 2012 Commonwealth Writers Book Prize, with her award winning novel, Patchwork. Banda-Aaku is one of four African writers shortlisted for this year’s prize.
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