The 2008 Commonwealth Writers' Prize regional winners were announced at a series of events in Syden, Australia; Kingston, Jamaica; Kampala, Uganda; and London, UK, on March 13, 2008 as part of Commonwealth Week.
Among the winners was Guyanese-born, Nigerian-based Karen King-Aribisala for Best Book (African region). The title of her book is The Hangman's Game (Peepal Tree Press, 2007).
This is Karen King-Aribisala's second Commonwealth Writers' Prize award. She won the Best First Book award for her collection of short stories titled Our Wife and Other Stories (Malthouse Press, 1990).
Upon winning her second award, Karen King-Aribisala commented:
"I am of course delighted and excited to win the Regional Prize for Africa . . . but particularly because the very notion of the Commonwealth has afforded me the opportunity to voice Africa's pain, Africa's joy."
Read more on King-Aribisala here. (Peepal Tree Press profile).
The eight winners will be invited to take part in a week-long series of public events in South Africa in May 2008, culminating in the announcement of the overall Best Book and Best First Book winners, to be announced at the Franschhoek Literary Festival on Sunday May, 18.
[I hope I'll have completed my reading of The Hangman's Game by then, so I can give you a brief take on it...until such time that I can dig deeper into it.]
