Lauri Kubuitsile’s novel clinches Best International Book Prize at Sharjah
Lauri Kubuitsile’s novel The Scattering has won the prize for best international fiction at this year’s Sharjah International Book Fair, the world’s third largest book fair, in the United Arab Emirates.
The news was announced and the prize accepted by the author’s daughter at an opening ceremony in Sharjah on 1 November.
The 36th edition of the Sharjah International Book Fair sees the participation of 1,650 publishing houses from 60 countries in an 11-day celebration of literature, knowledge and culture.
First published in 2016 by Penguin Random House in South Africa, Kubuitsile’s The Scattering is a moving and intimate novel that brings to life the genocide of the Herero and Nama people in German South-West Africa in the early 1900s. Against the backdrop of southern Africa’s colonial wars at the dawn of the twentieth century, the novel traces the fates of two remarkable women whose paths cross after each has suffered the devastation and dislocation of war.
The Scattering has been described by Tendai Huchu as ‘an ambitious, powerful and poignant historical novel that brings to life a very important period’ and has subsequently been published in the Unites States by Waveland Press.
Kubuitsile is the author of many works of fiction for children and adults, including the short-story collection In the Spirit of McPhineas Lata and Other Stories. She was the 2007 winner of the BTA/Anglo Platinum Short
Story Competition and the recipient of the Botswana Ministry of Youth and Culture’s Orange Botswerere Award for Creative Writing in the same year. She has twice won the Golden Baobab Prize for children’s writing and was shortlisted for the 2011 Caine Prize. She lives in Botswana.
Other winners at the SIBF’s Awards are:
His Highness honoured winners of SIBF’s Awards as follows: • The Best Emirati Book by an Emirati Creative Writer Award went to Nadiya Al Najjar for her novel ‘The D Trilogy’.
• The Best Emirati Academic Book Award went to Dr. Maitha Majed Al Shamsi for her book ‘The Semiology of Sign in Contemporary Emirati Theatre’.
• The Best Emirati Book Award about the UAE went to Dr. Rashid Ahmed Al Mazrouei for his book ‘The Encyclopedia of Popular Proverbs’.
• The Best Arabic Novel Award went to author Abdullah Al Basees for his novel ‘Wolf Trap’.
• The Best International Fiction Book award went to Lauri Kubuitsile, for her novel ‘The Scattering’.
• The Best International Non-Fiction Book award went to Sophie Le Ray, Radhika Punshi and David B. Jones for their book ‘Game Changers’.
• The Best Local Publisher award went to Dar Molhimon from the UAE. • The Best Arab Publisher award went to Dar Al Mada from Iraq. • The Best International Publisher went to The Mathrubhumi Printing and Publishing Co. from India.