Meet the Commonwealth Writers' Prize finalists

Bookshop for South African & World Literature and the Commonwealth Foundation invite you to meet the finalists of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize 2008 at a coffee morning reading on Tuesday 13 May 2008, 10:00 for 10:30.

This is your chance to meet the finalists of this year's prize at BOEKEHUIS and listen to them read from their novels.

The Best Book and Best First Book winners of the 22nd Commonwealth Writers' Prize will be announced, this year in South Africa, on 18 May 2008.

In a unique aspect of the Prize, the regional winners are taking part in a week-long country-wide programme of readings, community activities and other public events alongside the final pan-Commonwealth judging. The eight finalists, a mix of established and new voices, come from Australia, Bangladesh, Canada, India and Nigeria. The week's programme will culminate in the announcement of the overall Best Book and Best First Book winners in a special ceremony as part of the 2008 Franschhoek Literary Festival, on Sunday 18 May.

For further information about the Franschhoek Literary Festival visit http://www.flf.co.za/

Meet the authors @ BOEKEHUIS,

Cnr. Lothbury and Fawley streets, Auckland Park

When: Tuesday 13 May 2008 at 10:00 for 10:30am

Plenty of safe parking at Campus Square, from where it is a lovely and short walk to BOEKEHUIS

RSVP: by Friday 9/05/08 on

011 482 3609 or boekehuis@boekehuis.co.za

The 2008 Commonwealth Writers' Prize regional winners are:

AFRICA

Best Book: Karen King-Aribisala (Nigeria) The Hangman's Game Peepal Tree Press

A young Guyanese woman sets out to write an historical novel based on the 1823 Demerara Slave Rebellion and the fate of an English missionary who is condemned to hang for his alleged part in the uprising, but who dies in prison before his execution. She has wanted to document historical fact through fiction, but the characters she invents make an altogether messier intrusion into her life with their conflicting interests and ambivalent motivations. As an African-Guyanese in a country where a Black ruling elite oppresses the population, she begins to wonder what lay behind her 'ancestral enslavement', why fellow Africans had 'exchanged silver for the likes of me'. As a committed Christian she also wonders why God has allowed slavery to happen. Beset by her unruly characters and these questions, the novel is stymied. In an attempt to unblock it she decides that she should take up a family contact to spend some time in Nigeria, to experience her African origins at first hand...

Best First Book: Sade Adeniran (Nigeria ) Imagine This SW Books

Imagine This is the story of a young girl's journey from childhood to adulthood. Lola Ogunwole leaves all that is familiar behind in London and is sent to live in a village in Nigeria. Dogged by events she has no control over Lola's journal is a compelling story about one girl's resilience against the odds, which culminates in the bittersweet fulfilment of a long held desire.

CANADA AND CARIBBEAN

Best Book: Lawrence Hill (Canada) The Book of Negroes HarperCollins Publishers

Abducted as an 11-year-old child from her village in West Africa and forced to walk for months to the sea in a coffle-a string of slaves- Aminata Diallo is sent to live as a slave in South Carolina. But years later, she forges her way to freedom, serving the British in the Revolutionary War and registering her name in the historic "Book of Negroes." This book, an actual document, provides a short but immensely revealing record of freed Loyalist slaves who requested permission to leave the US for resettlement in Nova Scotia, only to find that the haven they sought was steeped in an oppression all of its own. Aminata's eventual return to Sierra Leone-passing ships carrying thousands of slaves bound for America-is an engrossing account of an obscure but important chapter in history that saw 1,200 former slaves embark on a harrowing back-to-Africa odyssey.

Best First Book: C.S. Richardson (Canada) The End of the Alphabet Doubleday Canada

Meet Ambrose Zephyr: thought of by friends as better than some; by his wife Zipper as in need of no adjustment. On or about his fiftieth birthday, Ambrose discovers that he has one month to live. And so he and Zipper embark on a whirlwind expedition to the places he has most loved or longed to see, A through Z, Amsterdam to Zanzibar. But after Istanbul, their journey takes an unplanned turn when Ambrose seeks out the destination most fittingly called home.

EUROPE AND SOUTH ASIA

Best Book: Indra Sinha (India) Animal's People Simon and Schuster

Ever since That Night, the residents of Khaufpur have lived a perilous existence. The water they drink, the ground they walk on and the atmosphere they breathe is poisoned. Nobody has received compensation or help for the chemical leak, least of all Animal, as he is known, whose spine twisted at a young age, leaving him to walk on all fours. His mind is full of foul, insidious thoughts, but the bitterness is mixed with a longing to know human affection and, more urgently, sex. He inhabits a dark kind of half-life.

Best First Book: Tahmima Anam (Bangladesh) A Golden Age John Murray

It is spring 1971 in East Pakistan and the country is on the brink of a revolution. Rehana Haque is throwing a party for her children, Sohail and Maya, in the rose-filled garden of the house she has built, while beyond her doorstep the city is buzzing with excitement after recent elections. None of the guests at Rehana's party can foresee what will happen in the days and months that follow, and her family's life is about to change forever.

SOUTH EAST ASIA AND SOUTH PACIFIC

Best Book: Steven Carroll (Australia) The Time We Have Taken HarperCollins

'That exotic tribe was us. And the time we have taken, our moment.'
One summer morning in 1970, Peter van Rijn, proprietor of the television and wireless shop, pronounces his Melbourne suburb one hundred years old.
That same morning, Rita is awakened by a dream of her husband's snores, yet it is years since Vic moved north. Their son, Michael, has left for the city, and is entering the awkward terrain of first love.
As the suburb prepares to celebrate progress, Michael's friend Mulligan is commissioned to paint a mural of the area's history. But what vision of the past will his painting reveal?
Meanwhile, Rita's sometime friend Mrs Webster confronts the mystery of her husband's death. And Michael discovers that innocence can only be sustained for so long.

Best First Book: Karen Foxlee (Australia) The Anatomy of Wings University of Queensland Press

Jennifer Day tells the story in The Anatomy of Wings. She's a ten year old obsessed with birds, facts and great world catastrophes. And she is struggling to make sense of her teenage sister sudden death. In The Anatomy of Wings Jennifer recounts the final months of Beth's life, unravelling them like a mystery, while on her own journey to regain her singing voice. Through Jennifer's eyes we see one girl's failure to cross the threshold into adulthood and a family slowly falling apart.

What is the Commonwealth Writers' Prize?

The CWP, an increasingly valued and sought-after award for fiction, is presented annually by the Commonwealth Foundation. Now in its 22nd year, it aims to reward the best of Commonwealth fiction written in English, by both established and new writers, and to take their works to a global audience.

The outstanding literary talent exists in many parts of the Commonwealth is making a significant contribution to contemporary writing in English. To encourage and reward the upsurge of new Commonwealth fiction and ensure that works of merit reach a wider audience outside their country of origin, the Commonwealth Foundation established the Commonwealth Writers' Prize in 1987.

Who is rewarded?

Every year, prizes are given for the Best Book and Best First Book, valued at £1,000, in each of the four Commonwealth Regions: Africa, Canada and the Caribbean, Europe and South Asia, South East Asia and the South Pacific. From these regions, the overall winner for the Best Book and Best First Book prizes are chosen.

How can you enter this competition?

Publishers are invited to make entries online or by completing an entry form and sending it with three copies of each book to the appropriate regional chairperson and one copy to the Commonwealth Foundation Awarded annually, this major prize for fiction is fully international in its character, administration and judging. The Prize covers the Commonwealth regions of Africa, the Caribbean and Canada, Europe and South Asia and South East Asia and the South Pacific.


The £10,000 Best Book Prize 2007 was awarded to New Zealand writer Lloyd Jones for Mister Pip. The Best First Book Prize 2007 of £5,000 went to Canadian writer D. Y. Béchard for Vandal Love.