Winners of the 2022 Sunday Times Literary Awards announced

Mignonne Breier and Tshidiso Moletsane were announced winners of the 2022 Sunday Times Literary Awards, in proud partnership with Exclusive Books, during an in-person event at Olives & Plates, Hyde Park on Thursday. (A fitting locale for such an illustrious literary event, as Olives & Plates is adjacent to Exclusive Books.)

Breier won the non-fiction award for Bloody Sunday: The Nun, the Defiance Campaign and South Africa's Secret Massacre (Tafelberg). Breier's powerful book explores the massacre at an ANC Youth League event in Duncan Village, East London where police killed more than 200 people and an Irish nun who was a medical doctor was murdered by an enraged mob. Judges said that in this “stunning book, the author left no stone unturned, which brings into sharp focus the hard life residents led in those days and goes a long way to illustrate the persecution of the leaders by the police”. 

Tshidiso Moletsane took home the fiction prize for Junx (Umuzi). Judges called this debut novel “a tour de force. Bold, raw and and surprisingly elegant Gonzo-style writing”. Moletsane’s brave story begins at a party in Dobsonville. A guy shares a joint with Ari — an imaginary friend, angel and demon and the rollercoaster of a night begins. There are stolen cars, brothels, sex, drugs and anxiety. It’s a trip of a book that is not only exciting but pokes cheekily and bluntly at the SA we live in.

The non-fiction award criteria asks that the winner should demonstrate the illumination of truthfulness, especially those forms of it that are new, delicate, unfashionable and fly in the face of power; compassion; elegance of writing; and intellectual and moral integrity.

Chair of judges for the non-fiction prize Griffin Shea said: “For a moment when we are trying to figure out how the country, and the world, have ended up such a mess, Breier’s Bloody Sunday reminds us things were always messy. True to her journalistic tact, she quotes others to convey those meanings she wants to get across. She quotes Njabulo Ndebele in a speech he gave at the anniversary of the massacre: 'The more we tell the story of what we did, we create the possibility that through our efforts we can create the future that we still desire'.”

Shea was joined on the panel by veteran journalist NomaVenda Mathiane and Bongani Ngqulunga, author of The Man Who Founded the ANC: A Biography of Pixley ka IsakaSeme, which won the Sunday Times Non-Fiction Award in 2018.

The winner for the fiction prize should be a novel of rare imagination and style, evocative, textured and a tale so compelling as to become an enduring landmark of contemporary fiction. 

Oil-field engineer turned banker turned writer, Ekow Duker took up the mantle as chair and he was joined by journalist and media consultant Kevin Ritchie and writer and political analyst Nomboniso Gasa.

Duker said of the winner: “Junx by Tshidiso Moletsane stood out in a quadrant all on its own. It is an exceptional novel written in a style that is “in your face” and brutally honest. In other words, it is difficult to get along with. It drags the reader into the filth and drug-fuelled exhilaration of a Johannesburg many of us keep at bay through the artifice of rolled up car windows, carefully delineated travel routes and gated communities.”

Each winner will receive R100,000.

Our congratulations to both Breier and Moletsane.