The shortlist for the regional winners from Africa have been unveiled in the race to win the influential 2010 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize.

The critically acclaimed Commonwealth Writers’ Prize is in its 24th year and has a strong track record of discovering new international stars. It offers an exceptional opportunity for new writers to demonstrate their talent and for authors already on the literary scene to strengthen their reputation.  Authors across Africa are in pole position to compete with some of the best authors from the Caribbean and Canada, South Asia and Europe, and South East Asia and the Pacific to win the coveted prizes of the Commonwealth’s Best Book and Best First Book.

The main purpose of the prize is to encourage and reward the upsurge of new Commonwealth fiction and ensure that works of merit reach a wider audience outside their country of origin.

This year Penguin Books is proud to announce that four Penguin books have been shortlisted to win the coveted prizes of the Commonwealth’s Best Book and Best First Book.  These books will now go through to the next phase of the competition, where the African regional judging panel will meet to decide the two regional Commonwealth winners for Best Book and Best First Book. The regional winners will be announced at an event on 11 March in Johannesburg. 

Kings of the Water by Mark Behr (Little, Brown)
When Michiel Steyn returns to the family farmstead in South Africa for his mother's funeral, he has spent close to half his lifetime abroad. But even after fifteen year’s absence, neither Michiel nor those he left behind have truly come to terms with his terrible flight from the farm they called Paradise. As Michiel submits himself to the rituals of mourning and remembrance in the small town and on the land where he became a man, all that has lain undisturbed for years is brought to light. A father's implacable fury and a brother's violent death, the loss of a child, the betrayal of love and the ugly memory of the dying days of apartheid all come between the prodigal and forgiveness.

Tsamma Season by Rosemund J Handler (Penguin SA)
Tsamma Season is set in the late 1800s. An intrepid couple spurn their former lives to take on the challenge of building a home in the Kalahari Desert. The family’s story is told by their precocious daughter, Emma. Born and raised in the desert, Emma’s love for the haunting isolation of her home, and for the singular people and animals with whom she shares it, becomes the driving force of her life’s journey.

Best First Book (Africa Region):
Jelly Dog Days by Erica Emdon (Penguin SA)
Growing up in a working-class family in the 1960s and ‘70s, with her narcissistic and neglectful mother, Lizette, and her stepfather, Piet, a construction worker who spends much of his time away from home, Terry learns early on that childhood, at least for her, is a matter of survival. Those who are meant to protect and care for her increasingly exploit her, and as she watches her mother drag herself to and from her job at Harry’s Dry Cleaner’s each day, then sink into alcoholism and eventually relinquish all parental responsibility, it is left to Terry to become the caregiver and protector of her four younger siblings. The only real affection she is shown comes from the family’s nanny Sophie, with whom she forms a strong bond, and from Piet who, while proving to be the more attentive parent, nevertheless exacts a high price for his affection.

Sleeper’s Wake by Alistair Morgan (Penguin SA)
Winner of the 2009 Plimpton Prize.  When forty-six year old John Wraith regains consciousness after the horrific car accident that claims the lives of his wife and daughter, he is adrift, bewildered and deeply traumatised. He takes up the offer of time to recuperate in Nature’s Valley, and it is here that his path crosses that of a damaged family in retreat from their own horrific trauma. John’s uneasy involvement with this trio and particularly with Jackie, for whom he feels a confusing mixture of protectiveness and sexual attraction, provides the novel with its driving narrative and, ultimately, its shocking conclusion.  Written in lucid, often beautiful prose, Sleeper’s Wake is a haunting study of man at his most vulnerable.