Reading matters

It’s time for the annual awards merry-go-round, with winners and shortlists abounding.

First up was the 2007 HSBC/SA PEN Literary Award for short stories by writers under the age of 40.

Novelist Henrietta Rose-Innes, smoothly switching genres, won the $5 000 first prize for her entry, Poison. In his judging report, JM Coetzee praised it thus: “The behaviour of South Africans under conditions of stress is seen with sympathy and reported in a commendably indirect, understated way; the final effect of the story is surprisingly buoyant.”

Second prize of $3 000 went to Petina Gappah, a Geneva-based Zimbabwean lawyer, for her story At the Sound of the Last Post, which Coetzee described as “a darkly amusing satirical story about [Robert] Mugabe’s Zimbabwe tackled with great authority”.

Malawian writer and performance poet Stanley Kenani won third prize ($2 000) with For Honour, “a deceptively simple story that finds a new and creative way of approaching the tragic subject matter of Aids”, according to Coetzee.

The award, set up in 2005, is run by the South African Centre of International PEN (SA PEN), in partnership with HSBC Bank and New Africa Books. More than 300 entries were received for the 2007 award, from South Africa, Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mauritius, Namibia, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

The winning stories and 28 other shortlisted entries are published in African Pens—New Writing from Southern Africa 2007 (New Africa Books).

Ivan Vladislavic’s luminous examination of aspects of Johannesburg, Portrait with Keys: Jo’burg & What-What (Umuzi), lost out to In the Country of Men by Hisham Matar for the Ondaatje Award, but is a frontrunner for the Alan Paton Award (R75 000). The winner will be known on June 16 at the Cape Town Book Fair, with the other four contenders being Rabble-Rouser for Peace: The Authorised Biography of Desmond Tutu by John Allen (Rider Books); The Suitcase Stories: Refugee Children Reclaim Their Identities by Glynis Clacherty (Double Storey); White Scars: On Reading and Rites of Passage by Denis Hirson (Jacana Media); and Touch My Blood: The Early Years by Fred Khumalo (Umuzi).

An honorary award went to Scorched: South Africa’s Changing Climate by Leonie S Joubert (Wits University Press).

Also to be announced at the Cape Town Book Fair on June 16 is the winner of the Sunday Times Fiction Prize of R75 000. The shortlist is: Agaat by Marlene van Niekerk, translated by Michiel Heyns (Tafelberg/Jonathan Ball); My Mother’s Lovers by Christopher Hope (Atlantic Books); Mandela’s Ego by Lewis Nkosi (Umuzi); The Native Commissioner by Shaun Johnson (Penguin Books); and Green-Eyed Thieves by Imraan Coovadia (Umuzi).

Van Niekerk, one of the favourites, made an early score in this category, winning an honorary award for Memorandum: A Story With Paintings, translated by Michiel Heyns, with illustrations by the late Adriaan van Zyl (Human and Rousseau).

Shortlists are also out for the Via Afrika Literary Awards, an internal annual prize system for books published in the preceding year by NB Publishers, Jonathan Ball Publishers, LuxVerbi-BM, NVA and Van Schaik Publishers.

Nominees are:

WA Hofmeyr prize for Afrikaans prose—Die Boek van Toeval en Toeverlaat by Ingrid Winterbach; Horrelpoot by Eben Venter; and Memorandum by Marlene van Niekerk

Herman Charles Bosman prize for English prose—All I Have Left Unsaid by Maxine Case; Room 207 by Kgebetli Moele; and What Kind of Child by Ken Barris

Recht Malan prize for non-fiction—Are You With Us? by Mxolisi Mgxashe; Beautiful Ugly by Sarah Nuttall; and Die Groot Avontuur by Leon Rousseau

MER prize for illustrated children’s books—Die Avonture van Magrietjie Swaaiboude by Marianna Brandt, illustrated by Tanja Joubert; Die Avonture van Wilde Willemientjie by Riana Scheepers, illustrated by Vian Oelofse; and Geraamtes in die Kas by Fanie Viljoen, illustrated by Karl Stephan

MER prize for youth novels—Die Altaar van Aberdare by Chrystal Pickard; Praise Song by Jenny Robson; and Super Zero by Darrel Bristow-Bovey.

All that, and with the shortlist announcements of the University of Johannesburg and M-Net Literary Awards still to come. Writers must feel as Wordsworth did in apostrophising a similarly sanguine-seeming era: “Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive.”

Last, the winner of our Penguin Great Journeys competition, held in conjunction with Penguin Books. The winner is Jane Holiday of Rondebosch, Cape Town, who correctly answered 1) Turkey and 2) Benin.—Darryl Accone