FICTION PRIZE

CRITERIA

The winner should be a novel of rare imagination and style, evocative, textured and a tale so compelling as to become an enduring landmark of contemporary fiction.

JUDGES: Ekow Duker (chair), Nomboniso Gasa, Kevin Ritchie

CHAIR OF JUDGES EKOW DUKER SAYS: I’m sure we can all remember our school days when the teacher would pose a question to the class. Some pupils would immediately strain to answer. Others might look at each other in puzzlement, the answer tantalisingly out of reach. This year’s judging of the Fiction Prize was a little like that. Some novels by their magisterial telling of an important story, screamed at the judges to, “Pick me! Pick me!”. Others were more restrained, quietly confident in their ability to narrate a memorable tale.

Each of the five books that made this year’s shortlist met the criteria but in remarkably different ways. An Island by Karen Jennings is a masterful depiction of a fragile life lived in near-solitude. With its cast of indentured labourers and colonial administrators, Joanne Joseph’s Children of Sugarcane took us on a meticulously detailed journey from India to the cruel fields of Natal, and back again. All Gomorrahs Are The Same by Thenjiwe Mswane gently lifts the veil of familiarity that shrouds the existence of three women, allowing us a powerfully intimate view into their inner lives. Damon Galgut’s The Promise, winner of the 2021 Booker Prize, is a compelling study of a onceprivileged family in terminal decline. Finally, and without any warning to buckle up, Junx by Tshidiso Moletsane, flung us headlong into the exhilaration of inner-city Joburg.

THE PROMISE

DAMON GALGUT (Umuzi)

Judges called it masterful, measured, wellpaced and engrossing. This deftly written novel charts the crash and burn of the Swarts, a white Afrikaans family living on a farm outside Pretoria. Galgut delivers a stark and emotive novel with notes of black comedy. Written in four parts — essentially four funerals in four decades — which showcase the changes in SA and the anxiety of what these changes meant to this family.

AN ISLAND

KAREN JENNINGS

(Karavan Press) Jennings doesn’t continue the postmodernist leitmotifs of living on an island which were established by Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and JM Coetzee’s response to it in Foe.

Our reviewer wrote: “Instead of writing ‘back’ to another text, she digs deeper into the longterm impact of a colonist rule, and the twisted dictatorship that follows it. This allegorical tale could be read as a warning of the longlasting impact of fear, violence, depravity and poverty and the role isolation plays in feeding these conditions.” Our judges said: “Haunting in its depiction of a life lived in solitude, where the past is more real than the present. She is masterful in building the suspense, stone by blood-soaked stone.”

CHILDREN OF SUGARCANE

JOANNE JOSEPH

(Jonathan Ball Publishers)

Shanti is stifled by rural life in India and is facing an arranged marriage. To her, SA is a place to start afresh. After a harrowing journey she arrives in Natal only to find even more hardship and penury. Judges said: “A bold and masterfully written historical novel about a subject and era that is yet to be fully explored, told and given its proper place in

South African history. Joseph’s telling of the stories of generations of women is not only important but also compelling, nuanced and empathetic.”

JUNX

TSHIDISO MOLETSANE

(Umuzi)

The judges called it “a tour de force. Bold, raw and and surprisingly elegant Gonzo-style writing.” Moletsane’s brave story begins at a party in Dobsonville. A guy shares a joint with Ari — an imaginary friend, angel and demon and the rollercoaster of a night begins. There are stolen cars, brothels, sex, drugs and anxiety. It’s a trip of a book that is not only exciting but pokes cheekily and bluntly at the SA we live in.

ALL GOMORRAHS ARE THE SAME

THENJIWE MSWANE

(Blackbird Books)

Makhosi is angry with the world and struggles to communicate her rage with her mother and sister. Through these characters the reader is allowed into complicated conversations within black families about womanhood, masculinity, parenting, sexual abuse and mental health, addiction and loss. Judges said: “An intricate and gripping story told by three generations, all trying to make sense of life; from apartheid into liberation with all the ambiguity, volatility and uncertainty that this encompasses.”