The shortlists for the Sunday Times Literary Awards 2016 were announced over the weekend. There are two awards available to the writers in the awards; the nonfiction category is called the Alan Patton Award while the fiction category is called the Barry Ronge Prize. Both prizes named after famous South African white men.
The Alan Patton Award judging panel chair Achmat Dangor said about the books, “each of the writers has chosen subject matter with candour and honesty, and do not hesitate to challenge many popular notions that have become ‘accepted truths’ in our daily public discourse.” Dangor who is a playright, poet, novelist and political activist is joined on the panel by Tinyiko Maluleke and Pippa Green.
Those in the shortlist from long list announced in April are the following five writers and their books;
- JM Coetzee and the Life of Writing – David Attwell – Jacana Media
- Papwa: Golf’s Lost Legend by Maxine Case – Kwela Books
- To Quote Myself: A Memoir by Khaya Dlanga – Macmillan
- Rape: A South African Nightmare by Pumla Dineo Gqola – MF Books/Jacana Media
- Showdown at the Red Lion by Charles van Onselen – Jonathan Ball Publishers
On the fiction side, the judges are Angela Makholwa-Moabelo and Stephen Johnson with Rustum Kozain as chair. Kozain Kozain speaking about the prize noted that the writers are “in control of the mechanics of storytelling and so the storytellers that emerge, and the stories they tell, compel us. And they compel us – seducing us without revealing the seduction – into fictional worlds that are credible because of the quality of the storytelling”. Those in the running for the Barry Ronge Prize 2016 are;
- Boy on the Wire by Alastair Bruce – Umuzi
- The Dream House by Craig Higginson – Picador Africa
- The Magistrate of Gower by Claire Robertson – Umuzi
- Green Lion by Henrietta Rose-Innes – Umuzi
- Hunger Eats a Man by Nkosinathi Sithole – Penguin
- Showdown at the Red Lion by Charles van Onselen – Jonathan Ball Publishers
The winners of the Sunday Times Literary Awards will be announced on June 25th 2016 in Johannesburg, with each winner walking away with a cash prize of R100,000.
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