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Etisalat announces longlist for 2015 Literature Prize

12/11/2015 15:12

Nigeria’s telecommunications services company, Etisalat, has announced the longlist for the 2015 Etisalat Prize for Literature. Out of over 100 titles submitted from across the African continent, a total of nine books were chosen for this year’s Prize.

 

Ifeoluwapo Adeniyi (Nigeria), On the Bank of the River;Penny Busetto (South Africa), The Story of Anna P, as Told by Herself; Z P Dala (South Africa), What About Meera; Kurt Ellis (South Africa), By Any Means; Paula Marais (South Africa), Shadow Self; Fiston Mwanza Mujila (Democratic Republic of Congo), Tram 83; Masande Ntshanga (South Africa), The Reactive; Chigozie Obioma (Nigeria), The Fishermen; Rehana Rossouw (South Africa), What Will People Say?; make up the successful nine on the longlist.

 

The longlist was selected by an esteemed three-member judging panel: Professor Ato Quayson, Professor of English and inaugural Director of the Centre for Diaspora Studies at the University of Toronto (Chair of Judges); Molara Wood, writer, journalist, critic and editor; and Zukiswa Wanner, author of Men of the South and London Cape Town Joburg.

 

Commenting on the list, Professor Ato Quayson note that: “The range of submissions for the Etisalat Prize this year represents the vitality of literary writing on the continent, and the longlist is a selective showcase of the best to be found. The subjects covered in the longlist are so fascinating and varied that it would take another novel just to describe them all. Magnificent!”

 

According to Zukiswa Wanner, “The books on the longlist evoked many emotions in me as a judge and as a reader for the originality of their plots and the beauty of the language used. I know I shall be revisiting and gifting to friends many of them long after the winner has been announced.”

 

The winner of the 2015 Etisalat Prize for Literature will receive £15,000, an engraved Montblanc Meisterstück pen and will attend an Etisalat sponsored fellowship at the University of East Anglia, mentored by Professor Giles Foden, author of The Last King of Scotland.

 

The Etisalat Prize for Literature launched in June 2013 is the first pan-African prize that is open solely to debut fiction writers of African citizenship and has now established itself as the most prestigious literary prize for African fiction.

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