Alert! The winners of the 2009 Sanlam Prize for Youth Literature – given biennially – were announced last night in Cape Town. Two gold and three silver prizes were dished out – and BOOK SA member Alex Smith was amongst the gong-ees, winning a silver award in the English category. Congratulations to her!
The other winners were Dumisani Sibiya (Zulu – gold), Adeline Radloff (English – gold), Derick van der Walt (Afrikaans – silver) – all pictured above – and Mabonchi Motimele Goodwill (Sotho – silver). All the medalists will have their works published by Tafelberg Publishers, an imprint of the NB group, in October 2010. It’s not certain whether there are other prizes involved (i.e., cold hard cash).
One note of interest is that it’s Sibiya’s third Sanlam win, and van der Walt’s second.
Here’s the release from NB:
Press release
A unique relationship between Sanlam and Tafelberg Publishers has over the years fostered the publication of new titles in youth literature: the biennial Sanlam Prize for Youth Literature. The names of the 2009 winners were announced at a gala evening held at the Officers Club in Century City on Wednesday, 17 March 2010.
The theme of the winning stories, and the evening as a whole, was humour, and there was no shortage of laughs and smiles as the audience was regaled on a choice selection of contrasting tales by master of ceremonies Marc Lottering. The event marked the announcement of the thirteenth Sanlam Prize for Youth Literature after its inception in 1980, when it was initially awarded only every three years, later transforming to a biennial event.
This year, two gold and three silver prizes were awarded. The judges in the English- and Nguni-language categories were especially impressed with the quality of entries they received.
The gold medal winner for 2009 in the Nguni languages category is the Johannesburg author and publisher Dumisani Sibiya, for his story Ngiyolibala Ngife (IsiZulu). The moderator, Professor Bheki Ntuli, recommended that this story be awarded the highest honour. It is the third time that Dumisani Sibiya has received a Sanlam Prize.
In the English-language category debutante Adeline Radloff was named as the winner of a gold prize for her story Sidekick, which the judges described as “a well-plotted adventure story written with a sure hand, a very competent grasp of dialogue, and a fine-tuned sense of irony, which gives the story its rather dark humour”.
The silver award in the English category went to Alex Smith for her story Agency Blue, described as follows by the judges: “Whacky and sophisticated with an accomplished sense of magic realism…sassy and highly original.”
Adeline Radloff and Alex Smith both live in Cape Town.
In the Afrikaans category only one prize was awarded. Derick van der Walt from Pretoria won again, after debuting in 2007 with Lien se lankstaanskoene. This time he received a silver prize for Willem Poprok. The judges were impressed by the flowing story development, fine characterisation and surprising twists that readers will find consistently captivating. They added that “it is an exciting and strong attribute of this story that it also has an underlying theme (that does not impose itself) of diversity between the genders, races and generations”.
In the category for Sotho languages, debutante Mabonchi Motimele Goodwill from Limpopo received a silver prize for his story Ke a hwa, ke a ikepela, written in Sepedi. It is the first time a Sanlam Prize has been awarded to a Sepedi work.
All the winning titles will be available in bookstores from October 2010.
Sanlam and Tafelberg are extremely proud of the positive reaction that the Sanlam Prize elicits. Over the past 13 years many of the winning works have been awarded other prizes, among them the MER Prize for Youth Literature, the Scheepers Prize, ATKV prizes (awarded by young readers), the CP Hoogenhout Award, and M-Net prizes. Some of the works have also been published internationally. Through this competition Sanlam helps develop both readers and authors, providing a much richer literary landscape for young readers.
In her speech, Eloise Wessels, chief executive officer of NB Publishers (of which Tafelberg is an imprint), announced the theme for the next Sanlam Prize for Youth Literature, to be held in 2011. This time round the organisers will be looking for stories in which hope plays a role. The closing date for entries for the next competition is 30 June 2011.
The jury is out on the intentions of the mysterious “Free the Web” Campaign that has nuzzled its way onto networking sites and advertising spaces across the net – including taking up prime Google ad space on BOOK SA (see images above).
What exactly does it mean to “Free the Web”? One ADSL discussionista has proposed that this could simply be another promise of cheap uncapped internet. But, with 12,568 fans to their Facebook group, we think there’s more to it than that. This could be good – if Free the Web were getting Telkom to slash its 4mb line rates, for instance. Or it could be cynical and awful – if it amounted to just another guerilla marketing campaign along the lines of the National Skirt Extension Project or the CanYouTwist promotion.
Do fans of Free the Web really know what they are backing or are they simply clicking and following blindly? There are zero – zero – organisational details available online, just a lot of happy-clappy Orwellifying like this:
The purpose of this page is to highlight the effect of high bandwidth costs on ordinary South African small and medium business owners as well as the man on the street.
Something big is on the horizon… the time for change has come.
It’s time to Free the Web! Be part of this movement for change!
But the fog of Free the Web’s surreptitiousness is slowly lifting: a “whois” search on thewrightidea.co.za, which redirects to the Free the Web Facebook page, reveals its registrant to be Grant Wright of Quirk e-Marketing. Finally, some real finger-pointing can commence! Grant, alternatively Quirk, what the hell is going on here?
Grant’s answer would likely be: “Wait till tomorrow” – that’s Thursday, 18 March, when more on the campaign is set to be “revealed”. BOOK SA’s money is on: Free the Web is either driven by iBurst (in which case: fail) or an iBurst-like service that’s slightly cheaper than iBurst (in which case: fail again, unless the speed is 4mb and the bandwidth is essentially uncapped). BOOK SA’s hopes are pinned on: Free the Web will blow us out of the water with a truly innovative offering that will actually bring about the unshackling of web users in SA. Ooh, can’t wait. Now, about Telkom’s line rates…
Alert! This month, Kenyan author Ngugi wa Thiong’o releases Dreams in a Time of War, a memoir that publishers Harvill Secker describe as “a mesmerising portrait of a young boy’s experiences in an African nation in flux”.
Said country being Kenya, of course. Here’s more from the blurb:
Beginning in the late 1930s, this moving and entertaining memoir describes Ngugi’s day-to-day life as the fifth child of his father’s third wife in a family that included twenty-four children born to four different mothers. Against the backdrop of World War II, which affected the lives of Africans under British colonial rule in unexpected ways, Ngugi spent his childhood as the apple of his mother’s eye before attending school to slake what was then considered a bizarre thirst for learning.
As he grows up, the wider political and social changes occurring in Kenya at this time begin to impinge on the boy’s life in both inspiring and frightening ways. Through telling the story of his grandparents and parents and of his brothers’ involvement on different sides of the violent Mau Mau uprising, Ngugi wa Thiong’o takes us back to a momentous period in Kenyan history, deftly etching a bygone era, capturing the landscape, the people and their culture, and the social and political vicissitudes of life under colonialism and war.
The reviews for the book have started to trickle in – watch out for a sampling from the best on BOOK SA later this week.
As widely reported, author and activist Fatima Meer died in Durban on Friday, and received a state funeral on Saturday, where Winnie Madikizela-Mandela delivered the main speech. Here are the main stories related to Meer’s death published so far:
Obituary: Mail & Guardian
Fatima Meer, the African National Congress stalwart, died in a Durban hospital on Friday afternoon at 81. She had been admitted to hospital a few weeks ago.
The former South African Broadcasting Corporation board member and sociologist, despite crippling banning orders, built up a reputation as a prolific academic and a powerful advocate of gender equality.
Meer survived an apparent assassination attempt by apartheid hitmen in 1977, and attacks in later years, which she blamed on the Black Consciousness Movement and the Inkatha Freedom Party.
He said Meer, whom Madiba affectionately called Fatimaben (meaning sister Fatima), published Higher than Hope, an early biography of Mandela while he was still in prison.
“In the latter years of his imprisonment, she sent him drafts of her manuscript for correction. After interest was expressed in a film version of the book, she suggested to Mr Mandela that he be played by Sydney Poitier, to which he agreed, in a letter to her in 1989, adding, however, that he was not sure that the American actor would accept the offer.”
Dangor said Meer visited Mandela at his home in Johannesburg in October last year.
A tearful Winnie Madikizela-Mandela was among the hundreds of mourners who paid their last respects to struggle activist Fatima Meer at her state funeral at the Durban Exhibition Centre yesterday.
Meer died on Friday at St Augustine’s Hospital after suffering a stroke a few weeks ago at 81.
Madikizela-Mandela said that Meer “was never truly recognised for the work that she had done during her life”.
“I will work for her home to be declared a national heritage site. May her soul rest in peace.”
Alert!Tonight, Exclusive Books launches its new web retail portal, Exclus1ves, at a gala do in Fourways, Johannesburg. Follow my and others’ livetweets at #x1s to learn more about the online retail revolution that Exclusives hopes to bring SA.
Alert! Authors Marié Heese and Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani have won the Commonwealth Writers Prize – Africa region awards, for their novels The Double Crown: Secret Writings of the Female Pharaoh, which took the Best Book gong, and I Do Not Come to You by Chance, which was acknowledged as Best First Book. Heese and Nwaubani each win £1 000, and go on to compete for the overall prizes of Best Book (£10 000) and Best First Book (£5 000) in May.
The works were each selected from shortlists of seven. The announcement was made in Johannesburg this morning, at the SABC’s Radio Park campus, where Lebo Mashile – a Noma Award winner – presided over addresses by the British High Commissioner, Nicola Brewer, Commonwealth Writers’ Prize Africa Region judge Dan Ojwang, chairperson of the Africa Region prize, Elinor Sisulu and the SABC’s Phil Molefe. Brewer and the Acting High Commissioner of India, Shri Shambhu Kumaran, announced the winners.
Heese hails from Stilbaai in South Africa’s Western Cape, and is previously best-known for her children’s books. She publishes in both Afrikaans and English, and is the daughter of the revered Afrikaans author Audrey Blignaut (see her book on her mother, Audrey Blignault: uit die dagboek van ‘n vrou). The Double Crown has emerged as the winner from an extremely strong field, which included the likes of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Mark Behr, Zakes Mda and Andrew Brown.
Nwaubani keeps Nigeria’s “Best First Book” winning streak alive, following as she does in the footsteps of a certain Uwem Akpan, who rose to the heights of world literature after winning the prize last year and going on to become an Oprah Book Club choice. “I was born in Enugu, Nigeria,”, she tells African Writing in a comprehensive 2009 interview, “A year later, my parents moved to my hometown, Umuahia. I spent the first part of my childhood years in Umuahia Town—in the GRA, close to the railway station, amongst the expatriates and the Rotary Club members.” In a refreshing development for Nigerian letters, Nwaubani remains based in her home country. Her fellow shortlistees included the likes of Ghana’s Ayesha Harruna Attah and South Africa’s Alistair Morgan.
Speaking on behalf of the CWP Africa Region judges, Dan Ojwang remarked:
It is noteworthy that of the 14 books that made it onto the shortlists this year 10 are by women, which is unprecedented in the history of the CWP, Africa Region.
Given the exceptional depth and variety of books submitted for the prize, it is not possible to reflect at length about every single highpoint. However, there are a few interesting trends about which the panel of judges would wish to comment. These broad trends can be seen in the thematic content of the books, elements of interesting formal innovation and also areas of glaring problems.
One of the remarkable aspects of the entries was the high number that concentrated on human trafficking and migration. The most striking of such novels were Eyo by Abidemi Sanusi (Nigeria), On Black Sisters’ Street by Chika Unigwe (Nigeria) and Refuge by Andrew Brown (South Africa). Reading these entries, the panel of judges was struck by the way slavery, in new guises, has come to speak powerfully of the plight of a generation of Africans who have come of age at a time of destitution, political repression and out-migration—a time when home is all too often quite unhomely. Yet, in spite of the harrowing experiences presented in these novels, none of them resort to the neat endings that readers may expect after being shown so much suffering.
“I am the chosen of the Gods. I have always known that. This knowledge has been the source of my strength and power, and it is the reason why I know that those who now seek my death and desire to usurp my throne shall not succeed.” Marié Heese breathes literary life into the bare historical bones of ancient Egypt’s female pharaoh, Hatshepsut, with breathtaking success. She recuperates ancient Egypt for contemporary gender politics while also providing a highly imaginative account of how life may have been lived in the ancient world. A female leader who realizes her political ambitions in a male world, constantly confronting the challenges of wielding state power at an enormous personal cost, Hatshepsut provides a wonderful protagonist for a modern feminist readership. Hatshepsut’s voice is compelling, direct, insistent and totally believable.
I Do Not Come to You by Chance
“I do not come to you by chance. Upon my quest for a trusted and reliable foreign businessman or company, I was given your contact by the Nigerian Chamber of Commerce and Industry ….” There are few e-mail users around the world who have not received a ‘419’ letter promising them a large share of an equally obscene amount of money. We have all wondered about the people behind these scams. Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani’s novel provides some of the answers. Taking its title from the opening line of an e-mail scam letter, I Do Not Come to You by Chance provides a behind-the-scenes look at the 419 phenomenon, which takes its name from the section of the Nigerian Criminal Code which deals with advance-fee fraud.
You can read the first chapter of Heese’s The Double Crown via the Little White Bakkie preview service below (click here if it doesn’t load). Nwaubani’s UK publisher, Orion, has made chapter twelve of her book available online: click here to read an excerpt from I Do Not Come to You by Chance.
Heese has also compiled “reading notes” on her novel; take a look:
Congratulations to both winners, who now go on to compete with other regional winners for the overall “Best Book” and “Best First Book” awards, to be announced at a ceremony held in Dehli, India, just a few weeks from now.
Alert! Don’t Africans get it by now? Never trust a Naipaul. Not under any circumstances, not even if you’re Winnie Mandela, and if the Naipaul in question is merely a Naipaul by marriage, being the wife of the big fish, VS.
Turns out the Lady Naipaul had more in mind than accompaniment, however, but had also packed her gossip’s hat. She’s now published a kiss-and-tell account of an afternoon at the Soweto mansion of the “mystifying Winnie Mandela” that quotes the latter extensively, and none too flatteringly, about former president Nelson Mandela.
Did the Naipauls rock up at Winnie’s door the same day that they visited the Hector Pieterson memorial (as pictured above)? It would seem likely – the one’s a stone’s throw from the other. What’s less certain is whether their wide-ranging convo with the mother of the nation – which traversed the Stompie murder, the TRC, Nelson’s Nobel peace prize, and more – was on or off the record. Given VS’s initial reluctance to make the visit, as reported by his wife, one suspects that it might not have been strictly “on”. In which case, there’s suddenly much surplus egg for the conditioning of Winnie’s “uncreased brown face [which has] lost the softness”.
Africans, never trust a Naipaul – not even if they’re married to a living legend like you:
Winnie brought up his name very casually, as if it was of no real value to her: not any more.
“This name Mandela is an albatross around the necks of my family. You all must realise that Mandela was not the only man who suffered. There were many others, hundreds who languished in prison and died. Many unsung and unknown heroes of the struggle, and there were others in the leadership too, like poor Steve Biko, who died of the beatings, horribly all alone. Mandela did go to prison and he went in there as a burning young revolutionary. But look what came out,” she said, looking to the writer. He said nothing but listened.
It is hard to knock a living legend. Only a wife, a lover or a mistress has that privilege. Only they are privy to the intimate inner man, I thought.
“Mandela let us down. He agreed to a bad deal for the blacks. Economically, we are still on the outside. The economy is very much ‘white’. It has a few token blacks, but so many who gave their life in the struggle have died unrewarded.”
Alert! Small and independent African publishers are encouraged to register for the second annual Jozi Book Fair, to be held from 7 to 9 August this year.
Here’s the press release from co-organising institution Khanya College:
Press release
JOZI BOOK FAIR REGISTRATION OPENS 1st of MARCH 2010
With a bigger and more accessible venue, the second Jozi Book Fair will be taking place from 7 – 9 August in Museum Africa in Newtown. Small and independent publishers, NGOs and community organisations from South and Southern Africa are invited to exhibit at the Jozi Book Fair 2010. Registrations open on the 1st March and closes on the 19th of June 2010.
What is the Jozi Book Fair?
Jozi Book Fair was established by Khanya College as a response to a decline in progressive writing and publishing in South Africa in the past 20 years. Jozi Book Fair is committed to developing a robust and sustainable culture of reading in South Africa and engages with various reading circles, libraries, readers, writers and publishers in an effort to help develop and grow literacy and a culture of reading and more importantly, writing in South Africa.
Why Jozi Book Fair?
The culture of reading in South Africa is in crisis. Homes and schools are mostly deserts of reading matter. Public libraries are thin on the ground and poorly supported. Books and paper are expensive and beyond the reach of the majority of South Africans. Few communities have bookshops. Few teachers understand their roles as instructors, practitioners and promoters of reading. Even South Africans with advantaged backgrounds tend to aliteracy (they can read, but don’t). Social contexts are often hostile to reading.
It is within this social context that small publishers and writers must struggle to operate, forcing them to not only be producers of books, but also to take on the role of literacy developers and activists in South Africa if they wish to have any kind of market for their publications.
What about the first Jozi Book Fair in 2009?
On the 8th of August 2009 Jozi Book Fair debuted at Museum Africa in Newtown. With over 45 publishers exhibiting and 63 authors and speakers taking part in various round-table discussions and events, the Fair set itself up as a vital and necessary intervention for small and alternative publishers in South Africa.
Commercial publishers can’t always justify the publication of books that would probably only have limited markets, especially in a country like South Africa where the book-buying market is very small. A project such as the Jozi Book Fair makes possible the promotion of more marginal works, as well as the strategic networking between writers and publishers and distributors. Jozi Book Fair has opened up entry points into publishing, and has created new opportunities for new and marginal voices. Even writers and small publishers who have not worked through the Book Fair, have been encouraged by it through various events and seminars that have been hosted by the Jozi Book Fair team since August.
For more information visit: www.jozibookfair.org.za Or contact Thobile Disemelo on 084 377 3013 / 011 336 9190 E-mail: jozibbokfair@khanyacollege.org.za
Alert! SA’s perspicacious man-about-digital-lit Arthur Attwell was the first to spot it: Kalahari.net has launched its ebooks store, softly-softly, just a few days ahead of the big debut of its rival Excluisve Books’ new web retail portal, which is also set to include an ebook component.
Kalahari’s ebook system appears dependent, like parts of Scribd.com’s (and Little White Bakkie’s), on Adobe Digital Editions (ADE), a version of Adobe’s popular Reader that allows publishers to create digital works with full “DRM” (that’s short for Digital Rights Management). DRM, in turn, determines how the content may be used and shared (or not) across devices. The upshot is that you won’t be able to read your Kalahari ebooks without ADE – a platform that also limits where you can read the book. (Some eReader devices don’t support ADE; at the moment, your best bet is to read the books on a laptop or netbook.)
So far, Kalahari appears to have imported ebook catalogues wholesale from third parties – there doesn’t appear to be a locally-driven component, at first glance at least – meaning that a fairly random selection of international titles will now be available to readers, but no local ones. Moreover, these titles come with equally random pricing. Compare, for instance, the ebook version of Michela Wrong’s It’s Our Turn to Eat (one of the few Africa-centric books we could find in Kalahari’s ebook store): buy the digital edition for R204.26 from right now; or order the softcover, currently going for R171.00 on Kalahari, and wait 5 days for delivery. The choice is yours!
Local tech website e-relevant offers excellent further analysis:
Kalahari.net eBook offering & pricing:
The available eBooks cover a broad range of categories, the Fiction category appears to have over 2,000 eBooks (based on 86 pages and 25 eBooks displayed per page). 500 of these titles fall into the Romance sub-category which tends to dominate the eBook Fiction market.
Searching for the keyword ‘ePub’ (dominant eBook format) returns 2,797 results. The price ranges (no. titles in brackets) of ePub format are:
Less than R100 (973) R100 – R250 (1650) R250 – R500 (168) R500 – R1000 (4) R1000 – R2500 (1) More than R2500 (1)
Searching for the keyword ‘PDF’ (eBook format often used for academic & travel publications) returns 49,337 results. The price ranges (no. titles in brackets) of PDF format are:
Less than R100 (348) R100 – R250 (1752) R250 – R500 (9765) R500 – R1000 (9837) R1000 – R2500 (21285) More than R2500 (6350)
BOOK SA very much looks forward to covering the SA ebook wars (just as much as the Cape Town indie bookshop wars). Here’s hoping some heavy local ordnance arrives sooner rather than later!
Book details
It’s Our Turn to Eat by Michela Wrong eBook Edition EAN: 9780007325115 Click here to purchase
It’s Our Turn to Eat: The story of a Kenyan whistleblower by Michela Wrong Softcover EAN: 9780007241965 Find this book with BOOK Finder!
Alert! BOOK SA is not entirely convinced of the genuineness of the call, but Granta magazine is apparently looking for help compiling the top African short stories of the past 50 years. The following notice has been found poking out of various online literary thickets:
The Granta Book of The African Short Story
Edited by Helon Habila and Binyavanga Wainaina
This anthology will bring together the best of the best African short stories published in the last 50 years. You are invited to recommend any great short story you have read in a collection, a magazine, online, or heard on the radio, but it has to be by an African author.
The story could be in English, French, Portuguese, Arabic, or any major African language, but the final language of publication will be English. Send story title, author’s name, and any publication information you have to help us track your recommended story. Send before April 30, 2010, to: africastories2010@gmail.com
Is it real? BOOK SA will be calling Granta later on to find out. Even if not, however, the exercise of considering Africa’s top shorts might be worthwhile. From South Africa, off the top of my head, I’d recommend Siphiwo Mahala’s “The Suit Continued” and Ivan Vladislavic’s “The WHITES ONLY Bench” as strong contenders.
The jury is out on the intentions of the mysterious “
