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A friend made the dour observation recently that being on the longlist for an award is like waiting for someone to ask you to dance.

Neither she nor I was asked last night when the Sunday Times Fiction Prize longlist was winnowed from twenty-nine to a shortlist of five. The prize, at R75,000, is SA’s largest literary award.

We chaff may take consolation in this image, which I have pilfered from the Times‘ website. It’s the longlist, stacked - a frozen moment of promise.

If I was a literary bookie, meanwhile, I’d place extremely short odds on Marlene van Niekerk and Agaat to take the prize. It’s the thickest book of the bunch, close to the center. (Another friend points out that, in Agaat’s case, a translation is being judged, not an original work in English, which is quite irregular. But then again, SA’s literary politics are much like the real thing, haphazard - and what’s more, he’s on the shortlist.)

• Full Sunday Times fiction shortlist here; and non-fiction shortlist here.

by Njabulo Ndebele
Picador Africa

reviewed by Ben Oswest

I fear that because of a silly error on my part, a legion South Africans will now think less of Ernest Hemingway. How, precisely, have I impugned Papa Doc’s reputation? By suggesting in print - to the heart-clutching horror of a few people at the Sunday Times - that he singled out Tom Sawyer as the father of American literature. Any fool can tell you it was Huck Finn. How on Earth could anyone choose Tom Sawyer over Huck Finn - ? Answer: no one could, would, or, in fact, did. I actually knew this - spotted the error myself, in fact, after the fact - but for some reason I didn’t write it.

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Imraan Coovadia wrote the following letter to the Sunday Times, regarding my review of his Green-eyed Thieves. The paper did not publish the letter - it merely printed a correction - so here it is, with my brief response, in full.

Dear Editor:

In his review of my novel, Green-eyed Thieves, published 6 August in the Sunday Times, Ben Oswest twice refers to the brother of the narrator as Ahmed.
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In my review of Imraan Coovadia’s Green-Eyed Thieves, I gave the name of the main character’s brother as “Ahmed”. In fact - as Coovadia has since pointed out, in a letter to be published in this week’s Sunday Times - the correct name is “Ashraf”.

The error is mine and I regret it. Tune into Boswestblog on Sunday for Coovadia’s letter and my full response. I’ve meanwhile corrected the name in my post of the review:

• Green-Eyed Thieves reviewed by Ben Oswest.

Today’s Sunday Times ran a brief response to my opinion piece on the South African English literary marketplace. Here’s the link:

• Language tightrope (letter to the editor by Johann Rossouw)