Five African authors have been nominated for the International Dublin Literary Award. The award comes with a cash prize of €100,000. The shortlist will be announced in April 2018 and the winner will be announced on the 13th of June, 2018.
The International Dublin Literary Award is the world’s most valuable annual literary prize for a single work of fiction published in English. A list of 150 titles that were nominated by libraries across the world was released.
The prize is organised by the Dublin City Council. The 2018 Award was launched on the 6th of November by Lord Mayor Mícheál MacDonncha who commended the award for its promotion of excellence in world literature.
The 2017 Award was won by Angolan writer José Eduardo Agualusa for his novel A General Theory of Oblivion translated from Portuguese to English by Daniel Hahn. Nigerian writer Chinelo Okparanta was shortlisted for her book Under the Udala Tree.
The 2018 Award has five African authors on the list. Three of the authors were published in South Africa: Yewande Omotoso for her book The Woman Next Door, Mohale Mashigo’s The Yearning and Nthikeng Mohlele’s Pleasure. The three books were nominated for the 2018 Award by the Cape Town Library and Information Services in South Africa.
The two other African authors on the list are Ghanaian writer, Yaa Gyasi for her novel Homegoing which was nominated by seven libraries including the Jamaica Library Service in Kingston. Cameroonian writer Imbolo Mbue is also part of the shortlisted authors. Mbue’s book Behold the Dreamers was described as a “compulsively readable debut novel about marriage, immigration, class, race, and the trapdoors in the American Dream”.
The award comes with a cash prize of €100,000. The shortlist will be announced in April 2018 and the winner will be announced on the 13th of June, 2018.
According to the press release, 150 books eligible for the 2018 award were nominated by libraries in 111 cities and 37 countries worldwide; noting that 48 are titles in translation, spanning 18 languages and 25 are first novels.
By Socrates Mbamalu
