We’re delighted to announce that Zakes Mda’s THE ZULUS OF NEW YORK and Sally Andrew’s DEATH ON THE LIMPOPO have both been shortlisted for the Adult Fiction prize at the 20th Anniversary SA Book Awards. They have been shortlisted alongside Eva Mazza’s SEX, LIES AND STELLENBOSCH and Jackie Phamotse’s THE CRADLE OF THE HOCKEY CLUB.
The SA Book Awards celebrates books written and published in South Africa, as voted for by South African booksellers. This year a record number of booksellers participated, voting in three categories (Adult Fiction, Adult Non-Fiction, and Children’s) from a shortlist of bestselling titles composed by Nielsen BookScan South Africa in 2019. The winners for each category will be revealed in a virtual ceremony on 1 October 2020, along with an overall winner who had the highest number of bookseller votes.
Zake Mda’s THE ZULUS OF NEW YORK was published in 2019 by UMUZI and has been described as ‘compelling and harrowing’ by Abdulrazak Gurnah, author of PARADISE. It is a heart-breaking love story, celebrating the ingenuity of the creative spirit in the face of injustice. Though short, it packs a punch, and is perhaps his best work yet. A film deal is currently under negotiation.
Sally Andrew’s DEATH ON THE LIMPOPO, the third of the bestselling TANNIE MARIA MYSTERY series, was also published by UMUZI in 2019. Again featuring Ladismith’s famous crime fighter, Tannie Maria, our beleaguered heroine is here to restore peace from the Klein Karoo to the great Limpopo River. Armed with a tin of buttermilk rusks, she faces danger and heartache, as she desperately attempts to solve both murders but also matters of her own heart… Sally is currently working on the eagerly awaited THE MILK TART MURDER, fourth in the TANNIE MARIA MYSTERY series.
For updates follow the SA Book Awards Facebook page.
About Sally Andrew
Sally Andrew is a bestselling South African author. She divides her time between Muizenberg on the Cape Town coast and a nature reserve near Ladismith in the Klein Karoo, South Africa, where she lives with her artist partner and various wildlife (including a giant eland and a secretive leopard).
Her first novel, RECIPES FOR LOVE & MURDER: A Tannie Maria Mystery was a Kirkus Best Book of 2015, a Wall Street Journal Best Mystery Book 2015, The Bookseller Fiction Editor’s Choice 2015 and a Good Housekeeping Book of the Month.
Her books have been published in fourteen languages and Both Worlds have optioned rights to develop the RECIPES FOR LOVE AND MURDER television series.
Praise for Sally Andrew and DEATH ON THE LIMPOPO
‘A vivid, amusing and immensely enjoyable read about detection (and cooking) in an intriguing part of southern Africa …. A triumph.’ – Alexander McCall Smith
'Take a pinch of Alexander McCall Smith, a dash of Diane Mott Davidson, and add a smidge of the wild veld and you’ll get a taste for this lekker story (that’s “delicious” in Afrikaans). While the tone is heartfelt, Andrew doesn’t shy away from the realities of spousal abuse or the shadow of South Africa’s tumultuous history. With a fascinating setting, engaging characters, and a full complement of drool-worthy recipes, this is sure to leave readers craving more.’ – Starred review, Library Journal
'With her cosy Tannie Maria mysteries, Sally Andrew adds some zest (and recipes) to a predominantly serious genre. Even though it might gravitate more towards mysteries than hardcore crime, it’s still worth a read for its humour and South Africanisms.' — Dey There, 12 South African Crime Writers to Add to Your Reading List
'There is a Thelma and Louise-type thread that runs through this brilliant novel... Andrew has delighted her fans with her first two books, but in this novel she raises her game considerably without losing any of the charm of the character of Maria. I can't wait to see what her next novel offers.' — Jennifer Crocker, Cape Times
Visit Sally’s website here.
Follow her on Twitter.
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 (Theater) and an MA (Telecommunications) from Ohio University, and a Ph.D. from the University of Cape Town.
He has published 22 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.
Praise for Zakes Mda and THE ZULUS OF NEW YORK
‘A perceptive re-enactment of the experiences of African entertainers in late 19th-century London and New York ... a compelling and harrowing story of Em-Pee the Zulu dancer and his doomed love for the Dinka woman Acol that takes the reader deep into their imagined lives.’ – Abdulrazak Gurnah, author of PARADISE
‘One of the two most acclaimed South African novelists of the past twenty years [along with Coetzee]… Mda’s greatest gift is his Dickensian social range, his ability to generate characters from diverse backgrounds, colluding and colliding across the barriers erected to divide them. – Rob Nixon, New York Times Book Review
‘A voice for which one should feel not only affection but admiration’ – The New York Times
‘In novel after novel, Zakes Mda seems to have cultivated a mode of writing in which the realistic and the magical co-exist with unruffled ease.’ – Harry Garuba, Independent
'Zakes Mda is among the most acclaimed exponents of a new artistic freedom. His fiction has a beguiling lyricism and humour, revelling in the beauty of aloe-covered mountains or Cape marine life.' – Maya Jaggi, The Guardian
Follow Zakes on Twitter.
