The “African literature” category includes articles related to African fiction, poetry and drama. I fully acknowledge the fact that Africa is a large multicultural continent and that classifying all literature from the African continent under one heading does not do justice to this diversity. Yet, currently the number of African literary prizes and Africa related literary awards that I track is so small that dividing them into further subcategories would not serve a real purpose. This may change in the future as the range of literary prizes that I follow becomes wider.
To see all the latest literary awards news, see the front page of The Burnt Ones: Literary Awards News.
Arac de Nyeko wins Caine Prize
Date: July 12, 2007 | Discussion: No Comments
The Ugandan writer Monica Arac de Nyeko has been awarded the 2007 Caine Prize for her story “Jambula Tree”. The Caine Prize, awarded annually, was founded in 2000 to an African short story published in the English language. It is sometimes referred to as the “African Booker Prize”.
The winning work, a story about a lesbian relationship in a country where homosexuality is illegal, was described by the jury as “a witty and touching portrait of a community which is affected forever by a love which blossoms between two adolescents”.
While “Jambula Tree” remains unpublished or out of print in most English speaking countries, Ms Arac de Nyeko’s short story “Strange Fruit”, shortlisted for the 2004 Caine Prize, is available as part of the following selection:
Seventh Street Alchemy: A Selection of Writings from the Caine Prize for African Writing 2004
by Various
The 2004 winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing, Brian Chikwava’s “Seventh Street Alchemy” is featured alongside shortlisted stories from 2004, compositions from the Caine Prize’s March 2005 Workshop for African Writers, and Charles Mungoshi’s previously unpublished “Letter from a Friend” in this inspired collection of work from some of Africa’s most promising young and new writers. …
You can read more about Seventh Street Alchemy: A Selection of Writings from the Caine Prize for African Writing 2004 at Amazon.com and Amazon.ca.
Filed under African literature, English literature, Fiction, Short stories, Winners, World literature
Chinua Achebe wins Man Booker International
Date: June 15, 2007 | Discussion: 1 Comment
The Nigerian novelist, poet and literary critic Chinua Achebe has won the 2007 Man Booker International Prize. The £60,000 prize is awarded once every two years to a living author, whose body of work “has contributed to an achievement in fiction on the world stage”. This is the second time the award has been handed out, after Ismail Kadaré won it in 2005.
Achebe is probably best known for his first novel, Things Fall Apart (1958) and the Booker Prize shortlisted Anthills of the Savannah (1987).
Things Fall Apart
by Chinua Achebe
One of Chinua Achebe’s many achievements in his acclaimed first novel, Things Fall Apart, is his relentlessly unsentimental rendering of Nigerian tribal life before and after the coming of colonialism. First published in 1958, just two years before Nigeria declared independence from Great Britain, the book eschews the obvious temptation of depicting pre-colonial life as a kind of Eden. Instead, Achebe sketches a world in which violence, war, and suffering exist, but are balanced by a strong sense of tradition, ritual, and social coherence. His Ibo protagonist, Okonkwo, is a self-made man. …
You can read more about Things Fall Apart at Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.ca.
Anthills of the Savannah
by Chinua Achebe
Chirs, Ikem and Beatrice are three like-minded friends working under the military regime of His Excellency, the Sandhurst-educated president of Kangan. In the pressurized atmosphere, they are simply trying to live and love - and remain friends. …
You can read more about Anthills of the Savannah at Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.ca.
Filed under African literature, English literature, Fiction, Lifetime awards, Novels, Poetry, Winners, World literature
Adichie wins Orange Prize For Fiction
Date: June 11, 2007 | Discussion: No Comments
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has won the 2007 Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction, a £30,000 award given annually for the best English-language novel by a female author of any nationality. This was the 12th time the award was handed out.
Half of a Yellow Sun
by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
This highly anticipated novel from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is set in Nigeria during the 1960s, at the time of a vicious civil war in which a million people died and thousands were massacred in cold blood. The three main characters in the novel are swept up in the violence during these turbulent years. One is a young boy from a poor village who is employed at a university lecturer’s house. The other is a young middle-class woman, Olanna, who has to confront the reality of the massacre of her relatives. And the third is a white man, a writer who lives in Nigeria for no clear reason, and who falls in love with Olanna’s twin sister, a remote and enigmatic character. As these people’s lives intersect, they have to question their own responses to the unfolding political events. This extraordinary novel is about Africa in a wider sense: about moral responsibility, about the end of colonialism, about ethnic allegiances, about class and race; and about the ways in which love can complicate all of these things.
You can read more about Half of a Yellow Sun at Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.ca.
Filed under African literature, English literature, Fiction, Novels, Winners, World literature
Commonwealth Writers’ Prize winners announced
Date: May 30, 2007 | Discussion: No Comments
The 2007 overall winners of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize have been announced. The £10,000 award for the overall Best Book and the £5,000 for the Best First Book were chosen from the eight regional winners selected earlier this year.
This year’s winners are:
BEST BOOK: Mister Pip
by Lloyd Jones
On a copper-rich tropical island shattered by war, where the teachers have fled with most everyone else, only one white man chooses to stay behind: the eccentric Mr. Watts, object of much curiosity and scorn, who sweeps out the ruined schoolhouse and begins to read to the children each day from Charles Dickens’s classic Great Expectations. …
You can read more about Mister Pip at Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.ca.
BEST FIRST BOOK: Vandal Love
by D.Y. Béchard
A family curse – a genetic trick resulting from centuries of hardship – causes the Hervé children to be born either giants or runts. An astonishing novel, Vandal Love follows generations of this unique French-Canadian family across North America, and through the twentieth century, as they struggle to find their place in the world. …
You can read more about Vandal Love at Amazon.com and Amazon.ca.
Filed under African literature, Asian literature, Australian literature, British literature, Canadian literature, Commonwealth literature, English literature, Fiction, Novels, Winners, World literature
José Eduardo Agualusa wins Independent Foreign Fiction Prize
Date: May 5, 2007 | Discussion: No Comments
The Angolan writer José Eduardo Agualusa has won the 2007 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, an annual £5,000 prize awarding fiction published in English translation in the UK. The prize awards both the author and the translator of the work.
The Book of Chameleons
by José Eduardo Agualusa
This unusual novel about the landscape of memory and its inconsistencies follows Felix Ventura as he trades in a curious commodity—he sells people different pasts. He can create entirely new pasts full of better memories and complete with new lineage or augment existing pasts as needed. Narrated by an exceptionally articulate and rather friendly lizard that lives on Felix’s living-room wall, this richly detailed story explores how people can remember things that never happened—and with extraordinary vividness—even as they forget things that did in fact occur.
You can read more about The Book of Chameleons at Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.ca.
Filed under African literature, Fiction, Novels, Winners, World literature
Caine Prize shortlist announced
Date: May 5, 2007 | Discussion: No Comments
Shortlist for the 2007 Caine Prize for African Writing has been announced. Three of the five authors shortlisted for this £10,000 prize are Nigerian. Winners will be known on Monday, 9th of July.
This year’s nominated authors are:
Uwem Akpan (Nigeria) for “My Parents Bedroom” (published in The New Yorker, June 12, 2006)
Monica Arac de Nyeko (Uganda) for “Jambula Tree” (from African Love Stories, Ayebia Clarke Publishing 2006)
E.C Osondu (Nigeria) for “Jimmy Carter’s Eyes” (AGNI Fiction Online 2006)
Henrietta Rose-Innes (South Africa) for “Bad Places” (published in New Contrast vol 31 no4, Spring 2003)
Ada Udechukwu (Nigeria) for “Night Bus” (published in The Atlantic Monthly, August 2006)