Andrew Brown took home the fiction prize for The Bitterness of Olives (Karavan Press). Judges called the novel “[a] harrowing account of a moment of strife, beautifully told. The author, endowed with vivid imagination coupled with acumen and erudition, deftly immerses the reader in a brutal and bewildering landscape. A wholly sublime narrative, this novel is contemporaneous, daring, complex and aesthetically pleasing.”
Written before the Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip on October 7, Brown’s latest novel is set against the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A retired detective in Tel Aviv and Palestinian doctor in Gaza with a shared past, must resolve their differences to investigate a murder.
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.
Journalist and media consultant Kevin Ritchie chaired the non-fiction award, joined by associate professor and researcher Hlonipha Mokoena, and author and the owner of Book Circle Capital, Sewela Langeni.
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.
The 2024 fiction prize panel was chaired by author, playwright and academic Siphiwo Mahala, joined by award-winning literary journalist, writer and editor Michele Magwood, and medical doctor and co-founder of The Cheeky Natives podcast, Dr Alma-Nalisha Cele.
Each winner will receive R100,000.
Our congratulations to both Steinberg and Brown.
