Penguin SA Writers of the Month

I like when writers are asked deceptively simple questions in interviews, like 'Which word do you most overuse?' Or when a publication allowed writers to answer the question they would have liked to be asked but which interviewees invariably overlooked...

If Isabel Allende had not been asked to recall her 'most embarrassing moment' by The Guardian (UK), we would never have had this gem:

"Once a man said to me in bed, 'Come with me.' I thought he was inviting me to go with him to Spain."

No mention of beds in Ellen Banda-Aaku and Pius Adesanmi's responses to basic questions on the writing life put to them by their publisher, Penguin, but the answers are fascinating all the same. The two winners of the inaugural Penguin Prize for African Writing are Writers of the Month on the website of Penguin South Africa.

Both writers answer the same 10 questions. Here's how each recalled: My Earliest Memory:

Ellen Banda-Aaku
I’m about three years old, and I’m sitting at a table telling my parents about a dream I had the night before. I can’t remember what the dream was about what I do remember is them laughing so hard. The funny thing is as I grew older, till about age seven, I would actually make up stories and pass off as a dream I had just so I could tell a story.

Pius Adesanmi
Playing street football with my peers in the village and being annoyingly summoned by my father – just when the game was ‘sweetest’! – to come and read some abridged children’s version of stories from Greek mythology he just discovered in the family library. I could not for the life of me understand why Jason and his fellow argonauts had the right to leave their abode in ancient Greek memory just to come and disturb the football game of five or six-year-olds in Africa.

As it happens, Allende is one of the writers Adesanmi most admires. His book, 'You're Not A Country, Africa!' and Banda-Aaku's 'Patchwork' will be out from Penguin SA soon.
Read their answers to 10 questions here.

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Penguin Prize for African Writing - the winners

Congratulations to writer and scholar, Pius Adesanmi, who was unveiled as the winner of the inaugural Penguin Prize for African Writing in the Non-fiction category on Saturday September 4 in South Africa. Adesanmi won for his manuscript for a book of essays, 'You're Not A Country, Africa!'

Here's what the organisers said about Adesanmi's manuscript, which will now be published by Penguin South Africa:

"In this groundbreaking collection of essays Pius Adesanmi tries to unravel what it is that Africa means to him as an African, and by extension to all those who inhabit this continent of extremes. This is a question that exercised some of the continent’s finest minds in the twentieth century, but which pan-Africanism, Negritude, nationalism, decolonisation and all the other projects through which Africans sought to restore their humanity ultimately failed to answer. Crisscrossing the continent, Adesanmi engages with the enigma that is Africa in an attempt to make meaning of this question for all twenty-first century Africans."

Winning in the Fiction category is Zambian Ellen Banda-Aaku (left), who's also part of the Ghanaian writing community because she lived there for a while, although Penguin citation now informs that she lives in England. She won for her novel manuscript, 'Patchwork'. She was the 2007 Africa Regional winner of the Commonwealth Short Story competition.

The winners were announced at the Mail & Guardian Litfest in South Africa. See more photos from the award ceremony here.

• Photos: Penguin Books SA