Silent Minaret wins first EU prize

The Silent Minaret by Ishtiyaq Shukri has been announced as the first winner for the European Union Literary Award, based in South Africa [see earlier report here]. Netherlands ambassador to South Africa, Frans Engering and the EU ambassador, Michael Lake presented him with his award: a cash prize of R25 000 (about £2,300), an invitation to the Winternachten Festival in the Netherlands and the opportunity to see his book in print.

Jacana Media will publish and release this title at the end of March 2005 and launch it at the Time of the Writer Festival in Durban in April 2005 [see separate report here].

From the jury report: "The winner, Ishtiyaq Shukri, has written a thought provoking and account of idealism gone haywire. His characters are interesting because they are anything but predictable. The narrative remains gripping because we never get to meet the protagonist. He uses various points of view and a broad range of literary means to give the narrative extra depth. The story transcends the predictable South African setting, by moving to radical Islamic circles in London. "

Ishtiyaq Shukri was born in Johannesburg in 1968. He studied English and African Literature at the University of the Western Cape and Witwatersrand. He is currently studying South Asian and Middle Eastern Literature in London. He plans to return to South Africa later in 2005. The Silent Minaret is his first novel.

The book is set in London, the summer of 2003. Issa Shamsuddin, a South African history student living in Finsbury Park, vanishes without trace. Did Issa decide to disappear, or was he 'disappeared'? Why? Issa's friend Katinka, his 'brother' Kagiso, mother Dr Vasinthe Kumar and London neighbour Frances reconstruct their memories of the missing man, looking for clues in the past that might explain the riddle of the present. Could the answer about Issa's whereabouts lie in events that took place in the western Cape before South Africa's democratic elections? Issa's refrain, after all, was: "The past is always with us".

The judges for the prize were Nobel Prize winner, Nadine Gordimer, Professor Andries Oliphant (University of South Africa), Professor Kole Omotoso (writer and lecturer), Maggie Davey (Jacana Media), Alan Swerdlow (arts and culture journalist), Alex Dodd (lecturer in writing for the departments of journalism and English at the University of the Witwatersrand), and Dutch book critic Fred de Vries.