Let us know which book should win

Celebrating literary excellence, a combined total of 10 books were shortlisted for the Alan Paton Award for non-fiction and the Barry Ronge Fiction Prize over the weekend.

The annual event, a highlight of the prestigious Franschhoek Literary Festival, honoured authors who produced outstanding writing the previous year.

Five books were shortlisted in the Sunday Times Alan Paton Award, and five in the Barry Ronge Fiction Prize category.

“This year, the prize money for the awards has been increased to R100 000 each, which underscores theSunday Times’ commitment to promoting the best of our literature,” said Ben Williams,  Sunday Times books editor.

The Sunday Times Alan Paton Award, in its 26th year, recognises books that 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”.

Professor Bill Nasson, chair of the Alan Paton Award judging panel, said this year’s shortlisted books “open a wide window upon lives being made and also re-made in South Africa. Admirably imaginative in their grasp of chosen subject matter, they are rigorously robust and humane”.

The Barry Ronge Fiction Prize, now in its 15th year, is awarded to “a novel of rare imagination and style, evocative, textured and a tale so compelling as to become an enduring landmark of contemporary fiction”.

Dr Annari van der Merwe, chair of the Barry Ronge Fiction Prize judging panel, said, “2014 was a bumper year for South African English fiction. So many major writers produced significant work that one wishes the shortlist could have contained more than only five titles.”

On 27 June the overall winners of the Alan Paton Award and the Barry Ronge Fiction Prize will be announced at Summer Place, Johannesburg.

The Alan Paton shortlist consists of:

• Askari: A Story of Collaboration and Betrayal in the Anti-apartheid Struggle by Jacob Dlamini.
• Lost and Found in Johannesburg by Mark Gevisser.
• DF Malan and the Rise of Afrikaner Nationalism by Lindie Koorts.
• Postmortem: the Doctor Who Walked Away by Maria Phalime.
• A Man of Good Hope by Jonny Steinberg.

Those selected for the Barry Ronge Fiction Prize shortlist are:

• Tales of the Metric System by Imraan Coovadia.
• The Reactive by Masande Ntshanga.
• Arctic Summer by Damon Galgut.
• The Savage Hour by Elaine Proctor.
• October by Zoe Wicomb.

Let us know if you have read any of these books and which ones you think should win.