The Sunday Times Literary Awards shortlists have been announced and we are thrilled to share the news that Crooked Seeds by Karen Jennings has been shortlisted for the Fiction Prize! Congratulations, Karen and all other nominated authors!
For more details about the announcement, please see here:
Karavan Press was recognised for its book In Silence My Heart Speaks by Thobeka Yose, winning the $20,000 top prize
ALGIERS, Algeria, September 9, 2025/APO Group/ — Karavan Press, an independent publisher based in Cape Town, South Africa is the winner of the 2025 edition of the CANEX Book Factory Prize for Publishing in Africa that celebrates and recognises outstanding contributions of African publishers and authors to the literary world.
Karavan Press was recognised for its book In Silence My Heart Speaks by Thobeka Yose, winning the $20,000 top prize. The Prize was presented by Algeria’s Minister of Culture and Arts Azzedine Mihoubi during an award ceremony held during the ongoing Intra-African Trade Fair 2025 (IATF2025) in Algiers. Finalists received $2,000 each.
The Prize is a joint initiative of the Creative Africa Nexus (CANEX), an intervention by African Export–Import Bank (Afreximbank) in partnership with Narrative Landscape Press Limited. It aims to showcase the literary and publishing value chain in Africa and developing literary talent across the continent and the Diaspora.
Continue reading: “Karavan Press bags Creative Africa Nexus (CANEX) Book Factory Prize for Publishing in Africa 2025”
Karavan Press has been supporting the CLAWS (Clanwilliam Animal Welfare Society) Lucky Draw for the past three years and we are very happy to contribute once again to the wonderful prizes you can win in the CLAWS Luck Draw 2025.
This year’s prizes include:
OUDRIF ACCOMMODATION FOR TWO WORTH R7800
WINE FROM JOHN MAYTHAM’S COLLECTION WORTH R5000
KARAVAN PRESS BOOK HAMPER WORTH R2280
HOGHOUSE BREWING COMPANY CAFÉ VOUCHER WORTH R1000 & HOGHOUSE BREWING COMPANY BBQ VOUCHER WORTH R1000
GRAVITY ADVENTURES VOUCHER ADVENTURE FOR TWO WORTH R1100
DRIEHOEK AWARD-WINNING WINES WORTH R500
Entries close on 26 September. Draw will take place on 29 September. Winners will be announced on 30 September.
For more details, see:
Good luck!
Media release:
The University of Johannesburg Prize (UJ Prize) for South African Writing is pleased to announce the shortlist for books published in 2024. The Prize opened for submissions on 26 November 2024 and closed on 28 February 2025.
The UJ Prize was established in 2006 for South African writing and is not genre-specific.
We trust our panel of judges to do a fair and rigorous evaluation of submitted texts and select the most outstanding books. Following an intensive adjudication process, the judges have shortlisted the following books in their respective categories:
Debut Prize
Main Prize
The prize money is R75,000 (Seventy-Five Thousand Rand only) for the main prize, and R45,000 (Forty-Five Thousand Rand only) for the debut prize. The final results will be announced before the end of September 2025. For more information, please contact the UJ Prize coordinator, Prof Siphiwo Mahala via email: siphiwom@uj.ac.za
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Congratulations to all shortlisted authors, especially to Anna Stroud! We are thrilled that her debut novel, Who Looks Inside, is shortlisted for the UJ Debut Prize.
Earlier this year, Anna won the HSS Award for Best Fiction Emerging Author.
Thank you, Anna, for publishing with Karavan Press. It is a joy to celebrate you and this exquisite novel.
The shortlist for the CANEX Prize for Publishing in Africa — honouring the publishers who bring bold, brilliant African stories to the world — has been announced and we are thrilled that Thobeka Yose’s In Silence My Heart Speaks is among the selected titles. Congratulations to all shortlisted authors and publishers!
Thobeka, literary love and gratitude for the grace, courage and compassion with which you have shared your story with readers!
Meet all five unforgettable books chosen by the judging panel, chaired by Prof. Egara Kabaji:
• ‘No Pink in a Rainbow’ by Angel Patricks Amegbe, published by Masobe Books – A profound meditation on loss and the enduring power of quiet love, beautifully crafted both in prose and in print.
• ‘Dear Zimi’ by Chiziterem Chijioke, published by Quramo Publishing – A tender, courageous story of motherhood and resilience, positioning Chijioke as a significant voice in contemporary African literature.
• ‘The Comrade’s Wife’ by Barbara Boswell, published by Jacana Media – A bold, emotionally honest narrative that confronts personal and political betrayal in post-apartheid South Africa with feminist clarity.
• ‘Broken: Not a Halal Love Story’ by Fatima Bala, published by Masobe Books – A moving exploration of faith, identity, and forbidden love, balancing personal truth with spiritual devotion.
• ‘In Silence My Heart Speaks’ by Thobeka Yose, published by Karavan Press – A luminous memoir tackling mental health, abuse, betrayal, and sexual identity with honesty and defiance.
The winner will be revealed at CANEX@IATF2025 in Algiers, Algeria (4–10 September 2025) – the ultimate gathering for Africa’s creative industries.
Whether you’re a reader, writer, or culture lover, these books belong on your list.
To say that we are thrilled would be the understatement of the year … In Silence My Heart Speaks by Thobeka Yose (Karavan Press, 2024) is among the longlisted titles for the CANEX Prize for Publishing in Africa.
Congratulations to all other publishers and books! We are honoured and proud to feature on this wonderful list.
Congratulations, Thobeka! Literary love and gratitude to you! Thank you for publishing your brave and inspiring story with Karavan Press.
The 2025 Women’s Prize for Fiction longlist has been announced and we are thrilled to share the news that Crooked Seeds by Karen Jennings is among the sixteen nominated titles.
The full list in alphabetical order by author surname is:
Congratulations, Karen and all other longlisted authors!
Last year was a remarkable year for Karavan Press in all kinds of ways, but specifically in terms of literary awards. Karavan Press authors won five major awards, two of which recognised What Remains by Dawn Garisch. The story collection won the HSS Award for Best Fiction Short Stories and SALA’s Nadine Gordimer Short Story Award in 2024. In order to celebrate this wonderful achievement, we will be relaunching the collection at Exclusive Books Cavendish on Wednesday, 29 January, 5.30 for 6PM. Dawn will be in conversation with Mathapelo Mofokeng. Please join us for the celebration!
To RSVP, click here: Exclusive Books Cavendish
Please join us at The Book Lounge for a celebration of Andrew Brown’s The Bitterness of Olives, winner of the 2024 Sunday Times Fiction Prize.
The Book Lounge is where the story of the publication of this novel with Karavan Press began (join us for the celebration to hear the details) and where the book was officially launched in October last year. Since its publications, The Bitterness of Olives has been offering its readers a deeply empathetic insight into a turbulent history that continues to tragically unfold in front of our eyes. Earlier this month, the bestselling novel has been recognised with the prestigious Sunday Times Fiction Prize.
The Sunday Times Fiction Prize judges called it a “contemporaneous, daring, complex and aesthetically pleasing novel”.
It will be a great joy to celebrate this exquisite book and its wonderful author at the bookshop where it all started!
We hope to see you all there!
We are thrilled to announce that The Bitterness of Olives by Andrew Brown won the 2024 Sunday Times Fiction Prize. The judges called it a “contemporaneous, daring, complex and aesthetically pleasing novel”. Congratulations, Andrew! And thank you – for writing, for sharing this story with your readers, for publishing it with Karavan Press.
‘Why can you not be friends anymore?’
It was the story of his country, he supposed. Perhaps they could have been friends. Perhaps they were once. The reasons were complex, full of feeling, disappointment, resentment. And, of course, betrayal. This was the Middle East after all.
Avi Dahan, a retired detective mourning his beloved wife in Tel Aviv, and Khalid Mansour, a Palestinian doctor confronting the precarious reality of living in Gaza City, are still reeling from the political fallout that jeopardised their delicate friendship. When a mysterious corpse scarred by history and forbidden love shows up in Khalid’s emergency room, he reaches out to Avi for help. Though the detective is the only one who might be able to assist, he is the last person on earth to agree …
The stage is set for Andrew Brown’s unforgettable new novel, The Bitterness of Olives.
Did it really matter? In the face of chaos, was it important how she had died? That was the guidance he needed from Avi now. He needed to understand that question: did it matter anymore? Was it of any significance, how you died in a war?
ISBN: 978-1-7764581-2-7
Kindle: The Bitterness of Olives by Andrew Brown
ANDREW BROWN is an advocate and a sergeant in the saps reserves and police liaison officer for the Child Protection Unit at Red Cross Children’s Hospital. He is the author of two non-fiction books and five novels, including Coldsleep Lullaby, winner of the Sunday Times Prize for Fiction in 2006, and Refuge, shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Literature (Africa Region) in 2009. Street Blues: The Experiences of a Reluctant Policeman was shortlisted for the Sunday Times Alan Paton Award the same year. Andrew’s books are published in Germany, the Netherlands and the USA. He has three children and lives in Cape Town.
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