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No award for Noma 2004

No award is to be made for the 2004 Noma Award for African books, as the title originally selected as winner was later found not to fulfil the conditions of entry. The jury did, however, single out four titles for honourable mention.

The four titles are: The Cry of Winnie Mandela by Njabulo Ndebele, The Plays of Miracle and Wonder by Brett Bailey, Lanre and the Queen of the Stream by Tune Lawal-Solarin, and A Dictionary of Yoruba Personal Names by Adeboye Babalola & Olugboyega Alaba.


A total of 93 titles, from 56 African publishers, in 13 countries, in 6 languages, were submitted for the 2004 competition. The titles which received honorary mention came from Nigeria and South Africa.

Mary Jay, secretary to the Noma Award Managing Committee, said although some very good books were submitted, the Jury did not consider that any one was sufficiently outstanding and groundbreaking to merit the award. "The four titles cited for honourable mention are worthy barometers of excellent publishing in Africa," she said.


"The fact that no Award was made this year is not an overall reflection on the quality of African publishing. It is rather that some years have stronger entries than others; indeed in some years the debate has been very intense as between different contenders," said Jay.


All publishers in Africa are invited to submit entries for the 2005 award and the committee mails about 1,250 active publishers every year. Each publisher may enter up to three titles "to ensure that publishers selected the cream of their output". Entry forms and further details are available at www.nomaaward.org.

The 2003 winner of the award was Elinor Sisulu's biography of Walter & Albertina Sisulu In our Lifetime. The award was founded in 1979 by the Kodansha corporation of Japan and the first award was made in 1980 to Mariama Ba for Une si longue lettre. There has been no previous year in which the award has not been made.


The four titles receiving an honourable mention are:

  • The Cry of Winnie Mandela by Njabulo Ndebele (Cape Town: David Philip Publishers and later in the UK by Ayebia Books) tells of four ordinary South African women who relate their stories of waiting for absent husbands, introduced through the faithful Penelope who waited for Odysseus; and dialogue first with an imaginary and then a real Winnie Mandela. Innovative in style and form, the novel marries narrative, essay, and biography genres, turning the story of the political romance between Winnie and Nelson Mandela into something new, a fiction that is invented and reinvented in the process of narration. (Click here to read a review)
  • The Plays of Miracle and Wonder by Brett Bailey (Cape Town: Double Storey Books) is a rich and exciting book, lavishly illustrated, opening new doors to creative exploration of indigenous cultural forms. The text of three of the author’s plays are given, with essays and postscripts on their production, history, reception and impact on the author. Covering technical details, philosophical discourses and cultural explorations, the prose of the essays are fluid, filled with image and melody, reading like poetry.
  • Lanre and the Queen of the Stream by Tune Lawal-Solarin (Lagos: Lantern Books) is a charming and simple story of a young boy who meets the Queen of the Stream in a dream. It smoothly and delightfully fuses fantasy and reality with a positive outcome; and is remarkable in creating new fantasies from familiar ones, with attractive and lively illustrations.
  • A Dictionary of Yoruba Personal Names by Adeboye Babalola & Olugboyega Alaba (Lagos: West African Book Publishers) is a significant work of research and interpretation. The dictionary has 20,000 Yoruba names, the most detailed and substantive collection to date. The names are spelled, pronounced, defined and explained; and serve as a source of information on cultural, historical and religious themes, as well as ethics, proverbs, cosmology, mythology, history and language.

The Noma Award Jury is chaired by Walter Bgoya from Tanzania, one of Africa’s most respected publishers. The other members of the Jury in 2003 were: Professor Peter Katjavivi, Ambassador of the Republic of Namibia to Brussels and former vice-chancellor of the University of Namibia; Dr. Fatou Keita, academic and writer, University of Cocody, Abidjan; Professor Femi Osofisan, head of the Department of Theatre Studies at the University of Ibadan, and immediate past director of the National Theatre in Nigeria; and Mary Jay, secretary to the jury.