Commonwealth regional winners announced
12.03.09 Katie Allen

Jhumpa Lahiri has beaten fellow shortlisted authors Salman Rushdie, Philip Hensher and David Lodge to the Best Book Award at the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize 2009, in the Europe and South Asia region.

Lahiri’s short story collection Unaccustomed Earth (Bloomsbury) scored the £1,000 prize while Guardian First Book nominee Mohammed Hanif picked up £1,000 for A Case of Exploding Mangoes (Vintage) for Best First Book. Both authors will go forward to compete with the other regional winners for the overall best book and best first book prizes, worth £10,000 and £5,000, on 16th May.

The winners in the Africa region were: best book: Mandla Langa  The Lost Colours of  the Chameleon  (Picador Africa) and best first book: Uwem Akpan Say You‘re One of Them   (Abacus).
The winners in the Canada and Carribean region were: best book: Marina Endicott Good to a Fault (Freehand Books) and best first book: Joan Thomas Reading by Lightning (Goose Lane Editions).

The winners in the South East Asia and the Pacific region were: best book: Christos Tsiolkas          The Slap (Allen & Unwin) and best first book: Mo Zhi Hong The Year of the Shanghai Shark   (Penguin).


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I am happy for Uwem Akpan for making Nigeria proud.

@ Ndipe, your title is a little misleading. Mr. Akpan has not won the Commonwealth Prize. He is just the African Regional Winner. The overall judging is yet to be done. Moreover, his book is not a novel but a short story anthology.

Thanks for the correction.