Yale honours SA writers

06 March 2013 - 03:00 By ANDILE NDLOVU
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South African authors Jonny Steinberg and Zoë Wicomb are among Yale University's inaugural winners of the Windham-Campbell Literature Prizes.

South African-born, Scotland-based Wicomb, with published books including You Can't Get Lost in Cape Town and The One That Got Away, was one of three winners in the fiction category. US author James Salter and British novelist Tom McCarthy were the other two.

According to the Huffington Post, the prizes, at about R1.4 million a winner, "are among the highest paid in American literature".

Steinberg, who holds a doctorate in political theory from Oxford University, was one of three winners in the non-fiction category, alongside US essayist Adina Hoffman and Jeremy Scahill, author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army.

Speaking from the UK yesterday, Steinberg said: "It's great that it was such a rigorous process and serious people were involved but, again, I can think of many authors whose work is wonderful. Why I'm there, and not them, is just luck."

Authors were not allowed to enter but were nominated by a 29-strong panel of "literary experts".

Far from resting on his laurels and spending that prize cheque, Steinberg is meeting publishers about the next book he has written, which is expected to be published by early 2014.

"It's about a Malian man I met in Cape Town and his journey across the African continent; about things that happened when he got to South Africa," he explained.

"He was subjected to a lot of violence in South Africa, but in a quiet way. So part of the book is about xenophobia in South Africa and how it is experienced."

Steinberg said the other half of the book was about the man's journey through east and central Africa.

The Windham-Campbell literary festival will take place in September in New Haven, Connecticut, where the winners will accept their awards in person.

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