Natasha Carthew and Karen Powell shortlisted for the inaugural Nero Book Awards

We’re delighted to share the news that two Blake Friedmann books – UNDERCURRENT by Natasha Carthew and FIFTEEN WILD DECEMBERS by Karen Powell – have been shortlisted for the 2023 Nero Book Awards.

UNDERCURRENT has been shortlisted for the non-fiction award while FIFTEEN WILD DECEMBERS made the fiction shortlist. You can read about the other shortlisted titles here.

UNDERCURRENT was published in hardback by Coronet in April 2023, receiving excellent reviews and endorsements, including ‘this important and beautifully lyrical book asks questions about identity, belonging and the ability of words to transform a life’ from The Times. Part-memoir, part-investigation, part love-letter to Cornwall, UNDERCURRENT follows Natasha as she returns to the cliffs of her childhood, determined to make sense of an upbringing shaped by political neglect and a life defined by the beauty of nature. It is a journey through place, and a vivid story of hope, beauty and fierce resilience, and will be published in paperback in Spring 2024.

A Times Best Historical Fiction Books of 2023 pick, FIFTEEN WILD DECEMBERS was published by Europa Editions in October 2023. It is a creative retelling of the life of one of Britain’s most talented writers — Emily Bronte – and deftly explores imagination, liberty, sisterhood, and the power of nature in dazzling, evocative prose. Karen is currently working on her next novel.

The Nero Book Awards were launched in May 2023 and are underwritten and delivered by Caffè Nero in partnership with Right To Dream, The Booksellers Association and Brunel University London. The Awards ‘celebrate the craft of great writing and the joy of reading, while also pointing readers of all ages and interests in the direction of outstanding books.’ They recognise the ‘best writing and reads’ in the following categories: Children’s Fiction, Debut Fiction, Fiction and Non-Fiction.

Amanda Johnson, awards director, commented: ‘The announcement of our shortlist is such an exciting milestone for the Nero Book Awards. We have here an incredible range of books that will speak to a variety of different audiences, from books based on true stories to fantasies to explorations of self, place and landscape. Huge congratulations to all the shortlisted authors and their publishers. We hope that everyone will find a new favourite book on this list.’

The category winners will be announced on 16th January 2024 and those books will go forward for consideration for the 2023 Nero Gold Prize, to be announced at a ceremony in London in late February 2024.

About Natasha Carthew

Natasha Carthew is a working-class writer from Cornwall. She has written all her nine books outside, either in the fields and woodland that surround her home or in the cabin that she built from scrap wood. She is the Founder and Artistic Director of The Working Class Writers’ Festival and The Nature Writing Prize for Working Class Writers. Natasha is known for writing on socioeconomic issues and working-class representation in literature for several publications, podcasts and programmes; including ITV, BBC Radio 4, The Bookseller, Guardian, and The Economist. She is a recipient of The Bookseller Rising Star Award 2022.

Praise for UNDERCURRENT

‘A powerful story of social inequality told with the depth of voice that only comes from a writer passionately rooted in place. Like the Cornish tides that fill her life, Carthew is at times roaring, visceral and exclusive, in turn gentle, embracing and inclusive, but always driven by hope and determination.’ – Raynor Winn

‘Haunting and powerful, a book about the sea and the power of belonging, about secrets and words, this is a beautiful and powerful memoir. I read it in one sitting.’ – Kate Mosse

‘Carthew shows us Cornwall as it often lived but rarely seen, where the rich holiday and others struggle to survive. It's a tale of two counties with the ever-changing sea as a constant. It is a story of queer resistance, of community and of finding your own voice. Written with the personal campaign passion of Kerry Hudson’s LOWBORN.’ – Damian Barr

‘By turns marvellous, moving, & mesmerising’ – Anita Sethi

‘UNDERCURRENT deals with difficult issues, including violence, self-harm, Carthew’s unhappiness as a gay teenager and abuse of alcohol and drugs. There is righteous anger about the damage done to Cornish people by unemployment, social deprivation and lack of housing: “The heart of our communities is being ripped out”. But this is also a story of humour, resilience and doing things with Kernewek pride, and Carthew's decision in the closing pages to walk away from her self-destructive teenage life and the Cornish landscape she loved is moving.’ – Ann Kennedy Smith, Times Literary Supplement

About Karen Powell

Karen grew up in Rochester, Kent. She left school at sixteen but returned to education in her mid-twenties, reading English Literature at Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge. Karen lives with her family in York and works at York Minster Fund, a charity which raises money for the conservation and restoration of York Minster.

Her debut novel, THE RIVER WITHIN, was published by Europa in the USA and UK (2020) and Edizioni E/O in Italy, and was described as ‘utterly stunning’, ‘mesmerizing’ and hailed as ‘a masterpiece.’

Praise for FIFTEEN WILD DECEMBERS

‘How this isolated, grief-drenched existence gave rise to the passionate artistic sensibility of Emily’s poetry and fiction is powerfully envisioned in Karen Powell’s second novel, FIFTEEN WILD DECEMBERS. Powell’s debut novel, 2020’s THE RIVER WITHIN, was set in the 1950s in North Yorkshire, where Powell herself lives, and evinced the same fine eye for landscape that suffuses this novel… the worlds shared with her sisters and brother are beautifully drawn… Powell is faithful to the known facts about the Brontë family without letting this material oppress the fictional narrative… the description of the final weeks of Emily’s life is almost unbearably moving… for all this, the book’s lasting impression is not of melancholy, but unquenchable vitality… With FIFTEEN WILD DECEMBERS, Powell has served her heroine loyally.’ – Rebecca Abrams, The Financial Times

 ‘The story of moorland isolation, early deaths and burgeoning creativity is a familiar one, but Powell with Emily as her first-person narrator, gives it a new energy, capturing the vulnerability of the three sisters and their determination to make the most of their talents.’ – Nick Rennison, The Times, ‘The best historical fiction books of 2023’

 ‘I was spellbound by this fictionalised portrait of Emily Brontë, brimming with the texture of the dank, wild hills of Yorkshire, the weight and power of grief, and the contentment to be found in daring to forge one’s own path in the world. To read Karen Powell is to be constantly delighted and intrigued; each sentence is so sharp, so shining.’ – Elizabeth Macneal

‘Beautiful.’ – Victoria Hislop

‘Brilliant and imaginative… Its language is muscular and precise, its sympathy passionate, true and, in the end, overwhelming.’ – Anthony Quinn, author of CURTAIN CALL

 

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Henrietta Rose-Innes wins the University of Johannesburg Prize for Translation

Credit: Martin Figura

Congratulations to novelist, short story writer and translator Henrietta Rose-Innes, who has been awarded this year’s University of Johannesburg Prize for Translation for her work on the English language edition of Etienne van Heerden’s acclaimed A LIBRARY TO FLEE (Tafelberg, 2022).

The prize recognises the outstanding translation of a text from any language into any one of the official South African languages, with Henrietta working from Etienne’s original Afrikaans text DIE BIBLIOTEEK AAN DIE EINDE VAN DE WÊRELD to produce this book: a feat made all the more remarkable by the text’s expansive length, running to nearly 800 pages in its original edition.

‘Henrietta’s exemplary work in bridging linguistic and cultural gaps through translation has earned her this esteemed accolade,’ writes the University in a press release. ‘UJ sends its warmest congratulations to Henrietta Rose-Innes for her exceptional contribution to the world of translation and for her dedication to fostering greater cultural understanding through the art of language. Her remarkable work will undoubtedly leave a lasting impact on the world of literature and multilingual communication.’

Etienne van Heerden’s A LIBRARY TO FLEE book was called ‘huge, inventive, fascinating, funny, troubling, and highly courageous’ by Professor David Atwell (co-editor of The Cambridge History of South African Literature) and longlisted for the 2023 Sunday Times Literary Awards in South Africa.

About Henrietta Rose-Innes

Henrietta is a prize-winning author and literary translator with degrees in archaeology and biology, and an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Cape Town. She has worked in publishing, scriptwriting and as a creative writing teacher. She is the author of four novels: SHARK'S EGG (SA: Kwela 2000), THE ROCK ALPHABET (SA: Kwela 2004), NINEVEH (SA: Umuzi imprint, 2011; UK: Gallic Books, 2016), and her latest novel GREEN LION, published by Umuzi in 2015 and by Gallic Books in 2017. She is also an acclaimed writer of short fiction, and her 2010 collection of short stories, HOMING, features the 2008 Caine Prize winning story 'Poison' and the 2010 Willesden Prize runner-up, 'Falling'.

Praise for Henrietta Rose-Innes

‘Henrietta Rose-Innes writes an admirably taut clean prose.’ — J M Coetzee.

‘Rose-Innes’ writing is as entertaining as it is subtle – a rare combination.’ — Steven Amsterdam, author of WHAT THE FAMILY NEEDED.

‘I love Henrietta Rose-Innes’s work. With plotlines that are wittily subversive and language that is whippet-lean, it is long overdue for discovery by a wider readership.’ — Patrick Gale, author of NOTES FROM AN EXHIBITION

‘Rose-Innes writes with a dreamlike, lyrical beauty, but she has the ability to keep a tight hold on her plot. Each of her works is a finely wrought delight.’ – Jennifer Crocker, Cape Times

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Zakes Mda nominated for African Genius Awards

Photo credit: Sal Idriss

We are delighted that acclaimed author Zakes Mda has been nominated for the 2023 African Genius Awards.

The Awards were established in 2021 and are run by Priority Performance Projects, which is part of Plus 94 Research, a South African black-owned research company. They aim to honour exceptional Africans who espouse the values that will take the continent forward, with criteria including demonstrable contribution to problem solving, leadership and inspirational qualities, exceptional skills, outstanding contributions relevant to the community or society, and official recognition such as awards, honours and prestigious appointments.

The other nominees come from a wide range of fields and include Ameenah Gurib-Fakim (the first woman president of Mauritius), Oscar winning actress Lupita Amondi Nyong’o and Nobel Peace Prize winners Leymah Gbowee and Ouided Bouchamaoui. The full list can be found here. The three winners will be named on May 25, Africa Day, in a ceremony that will be streamed live from the University of Pretoria.

Zakes Mda’s latest novel, WAYFARER’S HYMNS was published by Umuzi in 2021 and was included in Brittle Paper’s ‘50 Notable African Books of 2021’ list.

 

Praise for Zakes Mda

‘A voice for which one should feel not only affection but admiration’ – The New York Times

‘Mda’s lyrical tale defies easy categorization and enters the realm of pure magic.’ – John Updike

‘Combines Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s magic realism and political astuteness with satire, social realism and a critical re-examination of the South African past.’ – The New York Times Book Review

‘Lyricism, vividness and dark, tragic wit have earned the author recognition here and in his homeland.’ – Publishers Weekly

‘The great South African novelist of his generation, a writer rich in both imagination and ironic political attitude.’ – The Philadelphia Inquirer

 

About Zakes Mda

Zakes Mda is the pen name of Zanemvula Kizito Gatyeni Mda. He is a South African, Lesotho and Appalachian American-African writer, painter, and music composer. He holds an MFA (Theatre) and an MA (Telecommunications) from Ohio University, and a PhD from the University of Cape Town. There have been recent successful exhibitions of his work in the US and South Africa and his paintings are bought by collectors around the world.

He has published more than twenty books, ten of which are novels and the rest collections of plays, poetry and a monograph on the theory and practice of theatre-for-development. His novel CION, set in southeast Ohio, was nominated for the NAACP Image Award. His memoir SOMETIMES THERE IS A VOID: MEMOIRS OF AN OUTSIDER was published by Farrar Straus and Giroux and was a New York Times Notable Book for 2012. He has won many prestigious literary awards in South Africa.

He divides his time between the USA and South Africa. He is Professor Emeritus of English at Ohio University, lecturer in Creative Writing at Johns Hopkins University and Extraordinary Professor of English at the University of the Western Cape. In South Africa he is a patron of the Market Theatre and director of the Southern African Multimedia AIDS Trust. He also runs a beekeeping project he established in 2000 with rural women of the Eastern Cape and is a director of NeoZane, a publishing house and animation film production company in Johannesburg.

 

Follow Zakes on Twitter.