Winners of 2005 Sanlam Prize for Youth Literature - chalk and cheese!

Press release

The winners of the 2005 Sanlam Prize for Youth Literature have just been announced - and it would be hard to find two stories that are more dissimilar.

The Jack-in-the-box surprise is well-known author and media personality Darrel Bristow-Bovey, who pops up out of the blue with a story for the very youngest readership catered for by the competition.

SuperZero is the story of Zed, who grows up fatherless, and who is hopeless at soccer and many other things. When he discovers his father's cache of superhero comics in an old wooden box in the garage, he falls upon them and devours them with such passion and abandon that his mother is filled with alarm and dismay.

Zed embarks on a journey of self-discovery, for he has been reminded of his dying father's last words to him and now realises that they were an injunction: he must find out what his destiny is, what task awaits him that he, and only he of all the millions of boys in the world, can and must perform.

Written with gentle humour and much empathy, this story brings to life the quandaries and perplexities of being a boy of Zed's age. It has been awarded the Sanlam Silver Prize.

The Gold Prize goes to Jenny Robson, who already has four Sanlam Awards to her credit. Praise Song is a whodunnit that starts off with the schoolgirl Gaone who, on her way to school, comes upon the body of one of her favourite teachers - murdered. From there on the reader keeps turning the pages at ever-increasing speed: Why was the gentle, popular choir-mistress murdered? Who could have done it? And, most particularly: Why does the one person who knows who the murderer is refuse to talk?

Interwoven with this is the story of Goane's battle to keep her beautiful, giddy younger sister and the local Don Juan from falling into bed together. Ebenezer is much too old and too experienced for Precious, and everybody knows that he's having an affair with a truck-driver's wife . . . Even though Gaone knows that it is wrong to generalise, she is worried sick.

In the Afrikaans category there were two entries that were so neck and neck that it was decided to award two Gold Prizes in addition to the Silver Prize. Newcomer Fanie Viljoen with his tour-de-force BreinBliksem is the recipient of the one Gold Prize, while the other goes to veteran author François Bloemhof for his entry Nie vir kinders nie. The Silver Prize was awarded to Vuvuzela by Engela van Rooyen.

In the category for Nguni languages the winner is the isiZulu story Ngidedele ngife, by Dumisani Sibiya, who was also winner in the previous competition. The same applies to the winner in the category for Sotho languages, Kabelo Kgatea. In fact, he has two previous Sanlam awards to his name. His latest winner, in Setswana, is entitled Ntshware ka letsogo.

All of the prizewinning books are published by Tafelberg Publishers. The two Afrikaans winners BreinBliksem and Nie vir kinders nie are to be launched at the Zula Bar in Cape Town on 20 August by the punk group Fokofpolisiekar. The other books will be launched in Johannesburg in October. More details will be announced later.

The winners were selected from a total of 114 entries: 50 in English, 52 in Afrikaans, 6 in Nguni languages and 6 in Sotho languages. In each category there were two prizes up for grabs: a Gold Prize of R12000 and a Silver Prize of R6000.

The judges were Elinor Sisulu, Penny Hochfeld and Barbara Ludman for English, and Elfra Erasmus, Kirby van der Merwe and Petra Grütter for Afrikaans, while Nguni manuscripts were adjudicated by Danisile Ntuli and Dr Thabs Ntshinga, and Sotho manuscripts by Prof Johan Lenake and Dr P.M. Sebate.

For further information or for photographs of the winners contact Michelle Cooper at (021) 406-3414 or mcooper@nb.co.za.



LitNet: 02 September 2005

boontoe / to the top

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