From the Booker to the Orange Prize and others, book prizes serve to recognise authors for their contribution to society and knowledge. Over time, these prizes have come to be expected and winning one confers on the winner a certain prestige and acclaim beyond what they could have thought of.
African authors have not been left out of the book prize winning sphere, and past winners have embedded Africa and their home countries’ position on the global map. Some notable Africans that have won book prizes in the past include Wole Soyinka, Nadine Gordimer, Laila Aboulela, J.M. Coetzee and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
2021 is no different for Africans as many of its authors have gone on to win amazing book prizes this year. We curated a list of five Africans that have won local and international book prizes in 2021. See them below.
- Damon Galgut – Winner of the 2021 Booker Prize
First on our list is the South African writer Damon Galgut who scooped the 2021 Booker Prize for his novel, The Promise.
Born to Jewish parents in 1963, Galgut wrote his first novel at the age of 17 and has nine novels and four plays to his credit. He had been twice shortlisted for the Booker Prize (first in 2003 and again in 2010 for his books, The Good Doctor and In a Strange Room respectively) before winning it this year.
To show that he is not a one-hit-wonder, Galgut has a record of other book prize nominations and wins to his credit including the 2004 and 2009 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, the 2015 Walter Scott Prize, and the 2015 Barry Ronge Fiction Prize.
His Booker Prize-winning book, The Promise, charts the crash and burn of a white South African family, living on a farm outside Pretoria.
Established in 1969, The Booker Prize for Fiction is awarded to the best novel of the year written in English and published in the UK and Ireland. Other Africans that have won the prize include Nadine Gordimer (1974), J.M Coetzee (who won it twice, 1983 and 1999), Ben Okri (1991) and Bernadine Evaristo (2019). The 2021 prize winner was announced on 3 November 2021 and the winner got the £50,000 prize money and an added £2,500 awarded to each shortlisted author.
- Abdulrazak Gurnah – Winner of the 2021 Nobel Prize for Literature
Following in the steps of African authors such as Wole Soyinka (1986), Naguib Mahfouz (1988), Nadine Gordimer (1991) and J.M Coetzee (2003), the Tanzanian author, Abdulrazak Gurnah, bagged the 2021 Nobel Prize for Literature. Winning a gold medal, a diploma and a whopping sum of £840,000.
Gurnah was born in Zanzibar in 1948 but had to flee to Britain in 1964 due to a violent uprising in Zanzibar. A lifetime academic, Gurnah taught at both the Bayero University, Kano and the University of Kent from where he retired as a professor of English. He is the author of ten novels including Paradise, By the Sea, Gravel Heart and Afterlives. Gurnah’s books have been long- and shortlisted for other prizes such as the Booker Prize and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize.
The Nobel Prize for Literature was established in 1901 as part of the will of Alfred Nobel and is awarded by the Swedish Academy to authors in the field of literature who have produced the most outstanding work in an ideal direction. The 2021 winner announcement was made on 7 October 2021.
- Cheluchi Onyemelukwe-Onuobia – Winner of the 2021 NLNG Prize for Literature
Not many authors get recognised for their works, Cheluchi Onyemelukwe-Onuobia did not only get recognised for hers but did so at the first attempt. Her debut novel, The Son of The House, won the coveted Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG)-sponsored Nigeria Prize for Literature in October 2021. The book is set against four decades of vibrant Nigeria, and celebrates the resilience of women as they navigate and transform what remains a man’s world.
Onyemelukwe-Onuobia is a lawyer and lecturer born in Nigeria in 1978. Winning the NLNG Prize made her $100,000 richer. The Son of The House has won and been long and shortlisted for other awards including the 2019 Sharjah Book Fair Best International Fiction Award and the 2021 Scotiabank Giller Prize.
The NLNG Prize for Literature was established in 2004 to celebrate the best writings from Nigerian authors.
- Omar El Akkad – Winner of the 2021 Scotiabank Giller Prize
Also winning a $100,000 prize money, this time for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, is the Egyptian-Canadian novelist Omar El Akkad. He won the prize in November 2021 for his book What Strange Paradise, a story of two children finding their way through a hostile world.
El Akkad is a journalist and author born in Egypt in 1982, moved to Canada and currently lives in the United States. What Strange Paradise is his second novel.
The Giller Prize was founded in 1994 by Jack Rabinovitch in honour of his late wife, Doris Giller, who died in 1993. The award recognises excellence in Canadian fiction – long format or short stories – and endows a cash prize of initially $25,000.00 now $100,000 annually. Esi Edugyan is another author of African origin that has won the Giller Prize. She is a Canadian born to Ghanaian parents and has who won the Prize twice, in 2011 and 2018 respectively.
- Meron Hadero – Winner of the 2021 AKO Caine Prize
Bagging the 2021 AKO Caine Prize for African Writing is the Ethiopian-American writer, Meron Hadero. Hadero won the £10,000 Caine Prize for her short story, The Street Sweep, a story about Getu, an Ethiopian boy at a crossroads of his life, as he negotiates the imported power dynamics of foreign aid in Addis Ababa.
Hadero was born in Addis Ababa but later migrated to the United States. She is the first Ethiopian to win the AKO Caine Prize.
The AKO Caine Prize got its name from the late Sir Michael Caine, former Chairman of Booker Plc. The Prize was founded in 2000 to showcase African writing to a wider audience. Past winners of the AKO Caine Prize include Sudan’s Leila Aboulela, Zimbabwe’s NoViolet Bulawayo, Kenya’s Okwiri Oduor and Nigeria’s Rotimi Babatunde.
** The book blurbs/summaries for the authors’ winning books above were gotten from the publishers’ websites or the prize’s website respectively.