Winners of the 2011 Commonwealth Writers Prize, Africa Region

The winners of the Commonwealth Writers Prize has been announced. The winners for Africa Region are:
  • Best Book: The Memory of Love by Aminatta Forna (Sierra Leone)
  • Best First Book: Happiness is a Four-Letter Word by Cynthia Jele (South Africa)
Congrats to all the winners. The shortlisted writers could be found here. Thus, I have increased my Commonwealth Writers Prize Winners Reading Project by two books, thanks to the winning authors. 

The judges for the Africa Region include: Ajoa Yeboa-Afari (Chair) (Ghana), Peter Simatei (South Africa) and Beula Thumbadoo (South Africa). Read more about them here.

Other Regional Winners announced include:
  • Caribbean and Canada
  • South Asia and Europe
  • South East Asia and Pacific
Click here to read the winners in those regions. The overall winners would be announced on May 21, 2011. 

Comments

  1. Geosi4 March 2011 at 18:33

    Yes...there has been an increase in our project - thus - by two books. The search and hunt for those books begins.... The chair, Adjoa-Yeboah Afari has said that among the some 60 entries from Africans, only 5 books were from Ghana. What a poor representation of Ghanaian writers. Nana, did you have any favorite for the best book?

    ReplyDelete
  2. ImageNations5 March 2011 at 00:54

    @Geosi, yes that is a poor showing. I hope things change soon. I haven't read any of the books in the shortlist but I guess Aminatta's book is a deserved winner, judging from what I heard about it. In fact all the shortlisted books were close contenders... Helon's book too I heard a lot about it. I thought

    ReplyDelete
  3. Amy9 March 2011 at 13:31

    Two more interesting sounding books to read to be sure. I was secretly rooting for Habila but alas, perhaps another year! I'll have to read these now to see how they compare.

    ReplyDelete
  4. ImageNations10 March 2011 at 06:57

    Two more in a never-ending challenge.

    ReplyDelete

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