Sue Nyathi was yesterday longlisted for the 2023 Sunday Times Literary Awards in the category of fiction. The author earned the honour for her 4th novel An Angel’s Demise, which was published in 2022. Earlier in the year, the book won Nyathi her first literary award at the 2023 HSS Awards (Humanities and Social Sciences Awards).
Delighted to be longlisted on [the 2023 Sunday Times Awards]. Congratulations to my peers who made it too!
The novelist has been writing professionally for over a decade. She first published The Polygamist in 2012, which was followed by The Gold Diggers (2018), A Family Affair (2020), and then An Angel’s Demise (2022).
The Sunday Times Literary Awards are regarded as South Affrica’s most prestigious annual literary awards for non-fiction and the fiction award in partnership with Exclusive Books. This year’s longlist was selected from literature published between December 2021 and December 2022.
This is going to be the 22nd year of the Sunday Times fiction prize. The criteria stipulates that the winning novel should be one of “rare imagination and style … a tale so compelling as to become an enduring landmark of contemporary fiction”.
Judging the fiction category are Ekow Duker, Kevin Ritchie and Professor Nomboniso Gasa.
Here is the fiction longlist in order of the author’s surname:
- In The Shadow of the Springs I Saw by Barbara Adair (Modjaji Books)
- The Heist Men by Andrew Brown (Penguin Fiction)
- How to be a Revolutionary by CA Davids (Umuzi)
- Stirring the Pot by Quraisha Dawood (Penguin Fiction)
- The Man Who Loved Crocodile Tamers by Finuala Dowling (Kwela)
- The Dao of Daniel by Lodewyk G du Plessis and translated by Michiel Heyns (Tafelberg)
- Chasing Marian by Amy Heydenrych, Qarnita Loxton, Pamela Power and Gail Schmillel (Pan Macmillan)
- Peaches and Smeets by Ashti Juggath (Modjaji Books)
- Two Tons o’ Fun by Fred Khumalo (Umuzi)
- Notes on Falling by Bronwyn Law Viljoen (Umuzi)
- It Doesn’t Have to Be This Way by Alistair Mackay (Kwela)
- The Daughters of Nandi by Nokuthula Mazibuko Msimang (Paivapo)
- The Second Verse by Onke Mazibuko (Penguin Fiction)
- Things My Mother Left Me by Pulane Mlilo Mpondo (Blackbird Books)
- Across the Kala Pani by Shelvyn Mottai (Penguin Fiction)
- The Quality of Mercy by Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu (Penguin Fiction)
- Hammerman: A Walking Shadow by Mike Nicol (Umuzi)
- An Angel’s Demise by Sue Nyathi (Pan Macmillan)
- An Unusual Grief by Yewanda Omotoso (Jonathan Ball Publishers/Cassava Republic Press)
- The Eye of the Beholder by Margie Orford (Jonathan Ball Publishers)
- In The Midst of it All by Thabile Shange (Kwela)
- A Dalliance with Destiny by Aman Singh Maharaj (Austin Macauley Fiction)
- A Library to Flee by Etienne van Heerden and translated by Henrietta Rose-Innes (Tafelberg)
- Red Tide by Irma Venter and translated by Karin Schimke (Tafelberg)
- Elton Baatjies by Lester Walbrugh (Karavan Press)
- The Other Me by Joy Watson (Karavan Press)
- The Errors of Dr Browne by Mark Winkler (Umuzi)
