Franschhoek Literary Festival

The Franschhoek Literary Festival closed with a fireworks-like grand finale this evening, one major announcement after another eliciting oohs and aahs, and the remarks of emcee Solly Philander providing staccato bursts of comic relief that threatened to steal the show altogether.

Said show was put on by the Department of Arts and Culture. Rivers of bunting and red carpet, a capacious big-top tent, a seven-person pop/mbaqanga band, row upon stately row of lawn seats in tight black cloth covers, and writers and dignitaries galore sitting in them – the Franschhoek Hoërskool theatre was transformed into something approximating a rustic state opera.

The central drama of the spectacle was the announcement of the Commonwealth Writers Prize winners for overall Best Book and Best First Book, and we’re pleased to bring you video clips from the winning authors’ speeches. Before the authors could take the stage, however, formalities were necessary – and an award honouring a South African writer was handed out.

The SA writer and award were Rustum Kozain and Olive Schreiner, respectively. It will be recalled that Kozain won the Olive Schriener prize for his collection of poetry, This Carting Life, some months back: tonight, he finally received his R5 000 cheque. For his acceptance speech, he read “Kingdom of Rain”, a poem from the book that represents one of Kozain’s highest achievements, the kind of work that makes one’s eyes sting. Here is the complete reading from the ceremony:

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Video: Rustum Kozain reads “Kingdom of Rain”

• Fuzzy? Not loading? Watch on BOOK SA TV

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Formalities followed, lubricated by Philander’s gaspworthy jokes. He doesn’t push the envelope, he torches it. After the Commonwealth Foundation representative had spoken – announcing a R100 000 donation to the FLF Library Fund for a mobile library – Philander threw out a line about British sexual habits, with particular reference to auto-erotic asphyxiation. After the CWP Chair of the Prize, the Australian Nicholas Hasluck, spoke about the judging process, the riffing on the man’s surname was merciless; and Philander saved the quote of the hour for Arts and Culture Minister Pallo Jordan himself: “Dr Zeeee Pallo Jordan is cultural diversity personified… which basically means he’s Coloured.” The audience roared every time Philander so much as muttered.

(Somewhere in all this, a representative of the Macquarie Group Foundation mentioned that Macquarie would continue to sponsor the CWP through 2010 – good news for the prize.)

Minister Jordan, after a lengthy speech on literacy and literature, announced the winners and handed over the cheques. The Best First Book prize went to Tahmima Anam of Bangladesh, for A Golden Age. Here is a clip of her speech:

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Video: Tahmima Anam accepts the Commonwealth Writers Prize (overall) for Best First Book

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Anam won £5 000. The Best Book prize, meanwhile, went to Lawrence Hill, for his The Book of Negroes (published as Someone Knows My Name in the US). Here is a clip of Hill’s speech after he received the £10 000 cheque:

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Video: Lawrence Hill accepts the Commonwealth Writers Prize (overall) for Best Book

• Fuzzy? Not loading? Watch on BOOK SA TV

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After Hill’s speech, the band struck up, the catering arrived, and the big top tent filled out with laughter, dancing, drinking, book signings – and much flash photography.

For more information on the CWP winners and their books, see the official press release below. Congratulations to the organisers of the FLF, a spectacular success in 2008.

Official CWP pres release

Overall Commonwealth Best Book and Best First Book Winners Announced at the Franschhoek Literary Festival

Hidden histories revealed by two prize-winners

“Stories of courage, endurance, hope and the power of the individual” say judges

• Lawrence Hill of Canada wins Overall Best Book for The Book of Negroes
• Tahmima Anam of Bangladesh wins Overall Best First Book for A Golden Age

The overall winners of the 2008 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize were announced today (Sunday 18 May) at the Franschhoek Literary Festival in South Africa.

South African Minister of Arts and Culture Z Pallo Jordan awarded a cheque for £10,000 for The Overall Best Book Award to Canada’s Lawrence Hill for his novel, The Book of Negroes. The Overall Best First Book Award of £5,000 was awarded to Tahmima Anam of Bangladesh for A Golden Age.

As well as winning the £10,000 prize, Overall Best Book winner Lawrence Hill will travel to London for an audience with the Head of the Commonwealth, HM Queen Elizabeth II, at Buckingham Palace, accompanied by Commonwealth Foundation Director, Dr Mark Collins. He will also meet with Commonwealth Secretary-General Kamalesh Sharma at the Commonwealth’s Marlborough House headquarters, and give a public reading from his winning book at Foyles’ flagship London bookstore.

The Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, an increasingly valued and sought-after award for fiction, is presented annually by the Commonwealth Foundation. The Prize aims to reward the best Commonwealth fiction written in English, by both established and new writers, and to take their works to a global audience, thereby increasing appreciation of and building understanding between cultures. It is sponsored and organised by the Commonwealth Foundation with the support of the Macquarie Group Foundation across all four regions.

On winning the award, Lawrence Hill commented:

“The Book of Negroes dramatises the all but forgotten story of 18th Century Africans forced into slavery in the Americas, liberated after many years and miraculously returned to the mother continent in the same lifetime. It was both intimidating and exhilarating to write the novel in the voice of an 18th Century African woman, Aminata. I thought of her as my own daughter and gave her the name of my eldest child, in order to love her sufficiently to lift her off the page.

“As a Canadian novelist, with the usual challenges that writers face in small markets, it is thrilling to receive the Prize and the opportunity that it presents. I thank the Commonwealth Foundation and the Macquarie Group Foundation for celebrating literature and literacy so vigorously in 53 countries worldwide.”

While Tahmima Anam said about her award:

“I’m honoured and humbled to be the first ever Bangladeshi winner of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. I wrote A Golden Age because I wanted the story of the Bangladesh war to reach an international audience. It is a story of great tragedy, but also represents a moment of hope and possibility for my sometimes troubled country.

“I thank the Commonwealth Foundation, the judges, the supporters and the organisers of the Prize for giving me this wonderful opportunity.”

The overall winners for Best Book and Best First Book were chosen by a panel of judges from six different countries who met over two days during the final programme. Speaking on behalf of the pan-Commonwealth panel, its Chair, the Hon Justice Nicholas Hasluck, commented:

“This year’s finalists, the eight regional winners, represented strong, original voices, with great variety in style and extraordinary depth of theme.

“The winner of the best book award is Lawrence Hill for The Book of Negroes.

“Epic in scope, this is the remarkable odyssey of Aminata Diallo. Sold into slavery, wresting her freedom, she survives to tell her story of courage, endurance and hope. Compellingly narrated, this literary triumph challenges us to reexamine the history of slavery.

“The Prize for the Best First Book goes to Tahmima Anam for A Golden Age.

“This is the first major fictional account in English of the creation of Bangladesh. Housewife, widow, and mother, Rehana Haque, exemplifies the power of the individual to resist and ultimately prevail against the ravages of war. The assured and lyrical prose evokes the tumultuous birthing of a new nation in an intensely personal family narrative.”

Mark Collins, Director of the Commonwealth Foundation, said: “Now in its 22nd year, it’s clear that the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize is more than ever the pace-setting prize. The two overall winning books are manifestly important works, and demand wider attention and readership. This Prize will help those stories spread. The whole week, which has seen the regional winning writers and the judges interact with readers, writers and students in diverse communities across South Africa, shows the reach and range of this prize.”

Christopher Hope, the Franschhoek Literary Festival Director, commented “It’s a great thing for us to play a part, this year, in the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize awards. The Franschhoek Literary Festival exists to enable writers to meet and mingle with colleagues from across the continent and around the world. Nothing serves that aim better than the chance of welcoming prize -winning writers from the Commonwealth to Franschhoek, and to South Africa.”

David Clarke, Chairman of the Macquarie Group Foundation, the main supporters of the CWP, said: “I would like to congratulate Lawrence Hill and Tahmima Anam for their outstanding works of fiction. The calibre of the winning books and authors is testament to the strong reputation of the Prize within the global arts community.

“The Macquarie Group Foundation has been in partnership with the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize since 2005. This year, we are proud to be extending this commitment to be the main supporter across the Prize’s four regions until 2010. The partnership will enable the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize to keep growing and, by doing so, identifying and rewarding more outstanding literary talent such as Lawrence and Tahmima.”

The Commonwealth Writers’ Prize final programme consisted of a week long series of public and community-orientated events in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Franschhoek, culminating in the announcement of the two overall winners. The final programme is unique in that it brings together the regional winners and judges in a different location each year. This year, for the first time, the final programme was held in South Africa in partnership with the Department of Arts and Culture, South Africa, and the Franschhoek Literary Festival.

The distinguished pan-Commonwealth panel of judges was chaired by Hon Justice Nicholas Hasluck AM (Chairman of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize), and comprised the four regional chairpersons and South African judge Pumla Dineo Gqola, an Associate Professor of cultural and media studies at the University of Witwatersrand. The four regional chairpersons are: Professor Arthur Gakwandi (Uganda); Dr Michael Bucknor (Jamaica); Professor Makarand Paranjape (India); and Dr Christine Prentice (New Zealand).

About the Winners

Overall Winner – The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill (HarperCollins Publishers)

Lawrence Hill is an award winning author of several novels and works of non-fiction, including The Book of Negroes; The Deserter’s Tale: The Story of an Ordinary Soldier Who Walked Away from the War in Iraq (written with Joshua Key); Black Berry, Sweet Juice: On Being Black and White in Canada; Any Known Blood and Some Great Thing. Lawrence was formerly a reporter with The Globe and Mail and parliamentary correspondent for The Winnipeg Free Press. His website is www.lawrencehill.com.

The Book of Negroes was also published in the USA as Someone Knows My Name. It won the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, became a number one Canadian Bestseller, was longlisted for the 2007 ScotiaBank Giller Prize, and named one of the top 100 books of the year by The Globe and Mail. Amazon in Canada selected The Book of Negroes as one of the year’s best 25 works of literature and fiction, while Amazon in the USA listed Someone Knows My Name as one of the top 100 books published in 2007 in the United States.

Abducted as an 11-year-old child from her village in West Africa and forced to walk for months to the sea in a coffle — a string of slaves — Aminata Diallo is sent to live as a slave in South Carolina. But years later, she forges her way to freedom, serving the British in the Revolutionary War and registering her name in the historic ‘Book of Negroes’. This book, an actual document, provides a short but immensely revealing record of freed Loyalist slaves who requested permission to leave the US for resettlement in Nova Scotia, only to find that the haven they sought was steeped in an oppression all of its own. Aminata’s eventual return to Sierra Leone — passing ships carrying thousands of slaves bound for America — is an engrossing account of an obscure but important chapter in history that saw 1,200 former slaves embark on a harrowing back-to-Africa odyssey.

Best First Book Winner – A Golden Age by Tahmima Anam (John Murray)

Tahmima Anam was born in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and raised in Paris, New York City, and Bangkok. She comes from a family of writers: her grandfather was a famous political satirist, and her father is the editor of Bangladesh’s largest-circulating English daily newspaper. She has a PhD in Social Anthropology from Harvard University, and an MA in Creative Writing from Royal Holloway College, where she studied with UK Poet Laureate Andrew Motion. Tahmima’s writing has been published in Granta magazine, The Guardian, and The New York Times. She is a currently a contributing editor at The New Statesman.

In 2001, Tahmima began research on the Bangladesh War of Independence and started work on A Golden Age. She travelled throughout Bangladesh, interviewing ex-freedom fighters, military officers, students, and survivors of the 1971 war. The novel is a fictionalised account of these war stories, combined with her own family history. In 2005, she received a grant from The Arts Council to complete the novel.

It is spring 1971 in East Pakistan and the country is on the brink of a revolution. Rehana Haque is throwing a party for her children, Sohail and Maya, in the rose-filled garden of the house she has built, while beyond her doorstep the city is buzzing with excitement after recent elections. None of the guests at Rehana’s party can foresee what will happen in the days and months that follow, and her family’s life is about to change forever.