No 2004 Noma award
The Noma Award has announced that no title has been selected to win the Award in 2004. The Jury singled out four titles for Honourable Mention. These were: The Cry of Winnie Mandela by Njabulo Ndebele; The Plays of Miracle and Wonder by Brett Bailey;
Lanre and the Queen of the Stream by Tune Lawal-Solarin and A Dictionary of Yoruba Personal Names by Adeboye Babalola & Olugboyega Alaba.
PRESS RELEASE
For release on Monday 10 January 2005
The Noma Award announce that no title has been selected to win the Award in 2004.
The Jury singled out four titles for Honourable Mention (alphabetical order by publisher):
The Cry of Winnie Mandela by Njabulo Ndebele (Cape Town: David Philip Publishers, an imprint of New Africa Books (Pty) Ltd, of Cape Town, South Africa). Four ordinary South African women tell their stories of waiting for absent husbands, introduced through the faithful Penelope who waited for Odysseus; and dialogue first with an imaginary and then a real Winnie Mandela. Innovative in style and form, the novel marries narrative, essay, and biography genres, turning the story of the political romance between Winnie and Nelson Mandela into something new, a fiction that is invented and reinvented in the process of narration.
The Plays of Miracle and Wonder by Brett Bailey (Cape Town: Double Storey Books, a Juta company, 2003). A rich and exciting book, lavishly illustrated, opening new doors to creative exploration of indigenous cultural forms. The text of three of the author’s plays are given, with essays and postscripts on their production, history, reception and impact on the author. Covering technical details, philosophical discourses and cultural explorations, the prose of the essays are fluid, filled with image and melody, reading like poetry.
Lanre and the Queen of the Stream by Tune Lawal-Solarin (Lagos: Lantern Books, a division of Literamed Publications (Nig. Ltd.), 2003). A charming and simple story of a young boy who meets the Queen of the Stream in a dream. It smoothly and delightfully fuses fantasy and reality with a positive outcome; and is remarkable in creating new fantasies from familiar ones, with attractive and lively illustrations.
A Dictionary of Yoruba Personal Names by Adeboye Babalola & Olugboyega Alaba (Lagos: West African Book Publishers Ltd., 2003). A significant work of research and interpretation, the dictionary has 20,000 Yoruba names, the most detailed and substantive collection to date. The names are spelled, pronounced, defined and explained; and serve as a source of information on cultural, historical and religious themes, as well as ethics, proverbs, cosmology, mythology, history and language.
93 titles, from 56 African publishers, in 13 countries, in 6 languages, were submitted for the 2004 competition.
The Noma Award Jury is chaired by Walter Bgoya from Tanzania, one of Africa’s most distinguished and respected publishers, with wide knowledge of both African and international publishing. The other members of the Jury in 2003 were: Professor Peter Katjavivi, Ambassador of the Republic of Namibia to Brussels and former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Namibia; Dr. Fatou Keita, academic and writer, University of Cocody, Abidjan; Professor Femi Osofisan, head of the Department of Theatre Studies at the University of Ibadan, and immediate past director of the National Theatre in Nigeria; and Mary Jay, Secretary to the Managing Committee (the Jury). The Award is sponsored by Kodansha Ltd, Japan.
For further information about the Award, please contact:
Mary Jay, Secretary to the Noma Award for Publishing in Africa, PO Box 128, Witney, Oxon OX8 5XU, UK. Tel: +44-(0)1993-775235 Fax: +44-(0)1993-709265 Email: [email protected]
www.nomaaward.org