Vladislavic, whose books include The Restless Supermarket, Portrait with Keys, and Double Negative, is one of South Africa’s most celebrated novelists, essayists and editors. 
 
The Windham-Campbell Prizes were established by Donald Windham and Sandy M Campbell to call attention to literary achievement and provide writers with the opportunity to focus on their work independent of financial concerns. There are three categories: fiction, non-fiction, and drama. These categories aim to honour and support writers anywhere in the world writing in English. The prizes debuted in 2013. Zoë Wicomb, another South African, won the inaugural award.
 
The two other winners of the 2015 fiction prize are Teju Cole and Helon Habila. Each writer will receive an unrestricted grant of $150 000.
 
Fourie Botha, publisher of local fiction at Penguin Random House South Africa, says: “Ivan Vladislavic is a brilliant writer and an inspiration to writers and editors. A more worthy winner for this prestigious award would be hard to find.”

Steve Connolly, managing director at Penguin Random House, says: “This is a spectacular achievement. It is a great honour for us to be publishing Ivan Vladislavic. Everybody should read him.”
 
Vladislavic has won many other prizes, including the University of Johannesburg Prize, the Sunday Times Fiction Prize and the Alan Paton Award for non-fiction.
 
A collection of new short stories by Vladislavic, 101 Detectives, will be published under the Umuzi imprint in April this year.