|
|
Uganda: Sir Naipaul Lights Up Writing Competition
 |
|
|||||||||
|
||||||||||
The Weekly Observer (Kampala)
27 March 2008
Posted to the web 27 March 2008
Simon Musasizi
After hosting the CHOGM late last year, there was no suitable venue to host the announcement of the regional African winners of the Commonwealth Book Prize 2008 than Uganda.
The event at Metropole Hotel in Kampala attracted several local and international writers, among them the suitable guest of honour, Sir Vidia Naipaul.
Naipaul, winner of the prestigious Nobel Prize for Literature in 2001, is described as one who embodies the spirit of the Commonwealth in the realm of literature. With more than 16 books under his belt, Naipaul has written about the place of his birth in the Caribbean, his adopted home in the British Isles, his ancestral home in India, as well as about Africa, South America and the Islamic World.
During his younger days, Naipaul spent a year as a fellow in creative literature at Makerere University during the mid 1960s. Soon afterwards, he wrote the award winning novel, In a Free State, which was based on his observation of the conflict that was simmering between the Prime Minister Milton Obote and Kabaka Edward Mutesa. Naipaul has a reputation for writing a book about every place he visits.
That is why he was the centre of attention when African writers met last Friday to hear from the judges who would represent Africa at the final Commonwealth competition scheduled for May in Cape Town, South Africa.
"His [Naipaul] range of subjects is formidable and yet there is a certain unity within them -an exploration of the cross currents in world history that have brought about political, economic and cultural upheavals and led to revolutions, wars, displacements during the 20th Century and into this century," Prof. Arthur Gakwandi, chairman of the African region judging panel, remarked before handing over the list of winners to Naipaul.
All the two winners were Nigerians. The Best Book Award went to Karen King-Aribisala for his book, The Hangman's Game published by Peeple Tree Press while the Best First Book Award went to Sade Adediran for his book, Imagine This, published by SW Books.
"Our usual writing has been about people migrating to towns where they get confused with too many cultures. But in these two books, we see people from the Diaspora getting back to their home countries," noted Gakwandi.
Gakwandi, a lecturer at the Literature Department, Makerere University, met with his co-judges Dr. Olutoyin Jegede of Ibadan University, and Maureen Isaacson of the Johannesburg Independent Newspaper in Kampala last month and selected the winners from two shortlists of six titles in each category.
The two winners get a cash prize of 1,000 pounds each and enter the final competition where they will compete with six other winners from the other three regions; Caribbean and Canada, Europe and South Asia, and South East Asia and the Pacific.
|
Gakwandi said 51 books had been submitted; of which 28 were from South Africa, 13 from Nigeria, 1 from Kenya and none from Uganda. Last year, both winners came from South Africa and were announced at a major Caribbean cultural festival in Jamaica.
The Commonwealth Literature Prize was established 22 years ago with the aim of encouraging and rewarding talent in creative fiction, and helping good writing reach a wider audience. The judging process takes place in two phases, with the first phase at the regional level after which the winners are submitted to a Pan-Commonwealth panel made up of the four chairmen of the regional panels.
They select the Best Book which gets a cash prize of 10,000 pounds (Shs 35 million) and the Best First Book that gets 5,000 pounds (Shs 20 million).
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Copyright © 2008 The Weekly Observer. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections -- or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Make allAfrica.com your home page | RSS Feed | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Top | Site Guide | Who We Are | Advertising | Search | Subscribe | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Questions or Comments? Contact us. Read our Privacy Statement. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
