By Biyi Olaniyi
No violet Bulawayo, a Zimbabwean has emerged winner of the inaugural edition of the Etisalat Prize for Literature.
Bulawayo beat the two other writers on the shortlist, Yewande Omotosho and Karen Jennings, to win the prize with her maiden novel, We Need New Names.
The novel is a satire of the dictatorship of the Zimbabwean President, Robert Mugabe, on the country, told through the eyes of children.
The winner received a cheque of £15,000 and an engraved Montblanc Meisterstuck pen and will also attend an Etisalat-sponsored fellowship at the University of East Anglia with Prof. Giles Foden, author of The Last King of Scotland, as mentor.
The judges for the prize, led by Pulma Gqola – an associate professor in the Department of African Literature at the University of Witwatersrand, South Africa, said they were impressed by the quality of entries in the prize.
“Each shortlisted work makes a strong statement about the human condition,” said one of the judges, Sarah Manyika.
