Women writers take full honours at 2013 Sunday Times Literary Awards
It is the first time since the inception of the Alan Paton Award in 1989, and the Fiction Prize in 2001, that women have claimed both accolades in the same year. Both writers have won with their debut books. The Sunday Times Lifetime Achievement Award for Literature has also been awarded for the first time.
Female writers stole the show at the 2013 Sunday Times Literary Awards, presented in association with CNA, this weekend. For her literary debut, Endings and Beginnings, popular columnist and radio personality, Redi Tlhabi, was awarded the coveted Alan Paton Award. Karen Jayes claimed the prestigious Sunday Times Fiction Prize with her novel, For the Mercy of Water. Nadine Gordimer, former Nobel Prize laureate for Literature, received the first Sunday Times Lifetime Achievement Award for Literature at the awards dinner held at Summer Place in Sandton.
Tymon Smith, outgoing Sunday Times books editor said, “Endings and Beginnings is a worthy winner of the prize, singled out by the judges for its brave and honest exploration of a life familiar to many South Africans and the way in which its author in her first book unflinchingly tackles the uncomfortable but extremely relevant issue of violence against women.”
Endings and Beginnings tells the story of Tlhabi’s experience of loving a township gangster, while she was coming to terms with the death of her father and growing up in Soweto.
For the Mercy of Water is also a debut novel for Cape Town-based writer and journalism lecturer, Karen Jayes. Set in an anonymous, drought-stricken country where places and characters transcend geographic or cultural labelling, water becomes the currency of power, and fuel of corruption.
“Karen Jayes' startling, engaging and sophisticated novel was commended by the judges for its original and universal examination of an increasingly important issue in a manner which places South African writing firmly on the global literary map,’ said Smith.
Internationally acclaimed South African writer, Nadine Gordimer was the first recipient of the Sunday Times Lifetime Achievement Award for Literature, presented by Sunday Times editor, Phylicia Oppelt. Oppelt said the award, was in appreciation of Gordimer’s “magnificent and epic writing”, and recognises a lifetime of literary achievement which includes being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
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