Debut women authors take top prizes in Sunday Times Literary Awards

Rounding off the hat trick, the first Sunday Times Lifetime Achievement Award for Literature has been given to Nadine Gordimer.

The winners are popular columnist and radio personality, Redi Tlhabi, who was awarded the Alan Paton Award for her book, Endings and Beginnings. Cape Town-based writer and journalism lecturer Karen Jayes, claimed the Fiction Prize with her novel, For the Mercy of Water. Both writers have won with their debut books.

About the books

Tymon Smith, outgoing Sunday Times books editor said, "Endings and Beginnings is a worthy winner of the prize, singled out by the judges for its brave and honest exploration of a life familiar to many South Africans and the way in which its author in her first book unflinchingly tackles the uncomfortable but extremely relevant issue of violence against women." It tells the story of Tlhabi's experience of loving a township gangster, while she was coming to terms with the death of her father and growing up in Soweto.

For the Mercy of Water is set in an anonymous, drought-stricken country where places and characters transcend geographic or cultural labelling, water becomes the currency of power and fuel of corruption. "Her startling, engaging and sophisticated novel was commended by the judges for its original and universal examination of an increasingly important issue in a manner, which places South African writing firmly on the global literary map," said Smith.

In presenting the Lifetime Achievement award, Sunday Times editor, Phylicia Oppelt, said the award was in appreciation of Gordimer's "magnificent and epic writing" and recognises her lifetime of literary achievement, which includes being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.