Header image: CA Davids and Pulane Mlilo Mpondo
The winners of the University of Johannesburg Prizes for South African Writing in English have been announced.
The 2023 edition of the prize celebrates works published in 2022.
Unlike most literary awards, the UJ Prizes are not linked to a specific genre, as, according to the organisers, the idea is to ‘open the prize to as many forms of creative writing as possible’.
The UJ Main Prize winner, CA Davids, will receive R70,000, while the UJ Debut Prize winner, Pulane Mlilo Mpondo, receives R35,000.
All the shortlisted authors will receive certificates of recognition.
The seven judges evaluated over one hundred books published in 2022.
Unlike most literary awards, the UJ Prizes are not linked to a specific genre, as, according to the organisers, the idea is to ‘open the prize to as many forms of creative writing as possible’.
‘This may make the evaluation more challenging,’ the prize organisers say, ‘in the sense that, for example, a volume of poetry, a novel and a biographical work must be measured against one another, but the idea is to open the prize to as many forms of creative writing as possible.’
Main Prize Winner
How to Be a Revolutionary by CA Davids
Prof. Ronit Frenkel, Head of the English Department at the University of Johannesburg and Chair of the UJ Prize judging panel, said about the winning entry:
How to be a Revolutionary by CA Davids is an extraordinary book that grapples with the failures of a revolution only partly realised. Davids’ novel links three narratives—that of Beth, a South African former anti-apartheid activist and current diplomat in China, her neighbour Zhao, a former communist party adherent and the fictionalised letters of Langston Hughes in the nineteen-fifties. This is a novel of important questions, lived ambiguities and a finely crafted novel that reflects an author at her peak.
Debut Prize Winner
Things My Mother Left Me by Pulane Mlilo Mpondo
Prof. Nedine Moonsamy, one of the judges of the UJ Prize, says:
Both stylistically experimental and lyrically punctuated, Pulane Mlilo Mpondo’s debut novel, Things My Mother Left Me, is a poetic force. Mpondo weaves women’s lives together, marking the existential horror and the communal enfolding of their contemporary existence. In this novel, South African life breaks open on various planes; the spiritual, the visual, the poetic and the humorous all reach us as a gratifying and seamless narrative flow.
The prizes will be awarded on Thursday, 14 September 2023, at the University of Johannesburg. The ceremony will be addressed by distinguished writer and former Chancellor of the University of Johannesburg Prof. Njabulo S Ndebele.
Last year’s UJ Prize winners were Mandla Langa, A’Eysha Kassiem and Lisa-Anne Julien.
