Native Commissioner wins Africa region: Best Book Commonwealth prize

Penguin Books South Africa has announced that Shaun Johnson has been awarded the 2007 Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book: Africa Region for The Native Commissioner.

Mr Johnson has responded to receiving the award as follows:

This is the most wonderful thing that could have happened with this book. I am still absorbing the news, but my first feeling is one of enormous encouragement to get writing all those other novels I keep talking about! I am really grateful to the very many people who have urged me along this road, especially Penguin and now of course the Commonwealth judges *

Alison Lowry, the Chief Executive Officer of Penguin Books South Africa, has commented:

We believed from the start that in Shaun Johnson's The Native Commissioner we had found an extraordinarily powerful new voice in South African literary fiction. This has been borne out not only through strong sales and excellent reviews but now in winning the Commonwealth Prize: Africa Region, through a literary award that gives this book and its author international recognition. Penguin is delighted by the news that this is the book to represent our country and our continent in Jamaica later this year.

The Native Commissioner will now enter the final stage of the competition, where an international judging panel will meet in Jamaica to decide the overall winners of the 21st Commonwealth Writers Prize. The announcement of the overall Best Book and Best First Book will take place at the Calabash International Literary Festival at Treasure Beach on 27 May 2007.

The Commonwealth Writers Prize, an international award for outstanding fiction awarded annually, aims to reward the best in Commonwealth fiction written in English, by both established and new writers, and to take their work to a wider audience. The objectives of the prize are to promote new voices, reward achievement, encourage wider readership and greater literacy, thereby increasing appreciation of different cultures and building understanding between cultures.

An increasingly valued and sought-after award for fiction, the prize is presented annually by the Commonwealth Foundation, an intergovernmental body working to help civil society organisations promote democracy, development and cultural understanding in Commonwealth countries.

Shaun Johnson's The Native Commissioner will be out in paperback in May 2007.