Karina Author, Book, Prize

The CANEX PRIZE FOR PUBLISHING 2026 LONGLIST features END & BEGINNING by ATHOL WILLIAMS

We are delighted to announce that End & Beginning by Athol Williams (Karavan Press, 2025) is among the longlisted titles for the CANEX Prize for Publishing this year.

“13 titles have been selected for the CANEX Prize for Publishing 2026, representing publishers from across Africa and the Diaspora. This year’s longlist puts the spotlight on the books, authors and publishers selected for the next stage of the prize.”

Congratulations to all other publishers and books! We are honoured and proud to feature on this wonderful list:

Congratulations, Athol! Thank you for publishing your brave and beautiful poetry with Karavan Press. It has been such a privilege to work with you!

Thank you to all the Judges for their time and consideration and thank you to all who make the CANEX Prize for Publishing possible!

Karina Author, Book, Literary Awards

The 2025 Sunday Times Literary Awards longlists announced

The Sunday Times Literary Awards longlists have been announced and we are delighted that they feature five Karavan Press titles. Congratulations to all longlisted authors!

Thank you to all who make these awards possible!

Mountains of gratitude to Karavan Press authors on the lists:

FICTION
Crooked Seeds by Karen Jennings (co-published with Holland House Books)
Who Looks Inside by Anna Stroud
Good Hope by Nick Clelland

NON-FICTION
In Silence My Heart Speaks by Thobeka Yose
Dayspring by C. J. Driver (co-published with uHlanga Press)

For all details, see: Sunday Times Literary Awards

Karina Author, Book, Prize

CANEX PRIZE FOR PUBLISHING IN AFRICA LONGLIST features IN SILENCE MY HEART SPEAKS by THOBEKA YOSE

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.

Karina Author, Book, Prize

Crooked Seeds by Karen Jennings longlisted for the 2025 Women’s Prize for Fiction

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:

  • Good Girl by Aria Aber (published by Bloomsbury Publishing)
  • The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley (published by Sceptre, Hodder & Stoughton, Hachette)
  • Somewhere Else by Jenni Daiches (published by Scotland Street Press)
  • Amma by Saraid de Silva (published by Weatherglass Books)
  • Crooked Seeds by Karen Jennings (published by Holland House Books)
  • All Fours by Miranda July (published by Canongate Books)
  • The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami (published by Bloomsbury Circus, Bloomsbury Publishing)
  • The Persians by Sanam Mahloudji (published by 4th Estate, HarperCollins)
  • Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (published by 4th Estate, HarperCollins)
  • Nesting by Roisín O’Donnell (published by Scribner, Simon & Schuster)
  • A Little Trickerie by Rosanna Pike (published by Fig Tree, Penguin General, Penguin Random House)
  • Birding by Rose Ruane (published by Corsair, Little, Brown Book Group, Hachette)
  • The Artist by Lucy Steeds (published by John Murray, John Murray Press, Hachette)
  • Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout (published by Viking, Penguin General, Penguin Random House)
  • The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden (published by Viking, Penguin General, Penguin Random House)
  • Fundamentally by Nussaibah Younis (published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, Orion Publishing Group, Hachette)

Congratulations, Karen and all other longlisted authors!

Karina Author, Book, Review

Hephzibah Anderson reviews AN ISLAND by Karen Jennings for the Observer

Karen Jennings’s taut, tenebrous novel describes what happens when Samuel, a septuagenarian lighthouse keeper and the sole inhabitant of a small island off the coast of an unnamed African country, acquires an uninvited houseguest. 

[…]

An Island is the only small-press published novel on this year’s Booker prize longlist, and if its chances of making the final cut feel slender, its deft execution and the seriousness of its political engagement serve as a potent reminder of all that such titles add to the literary ecosystem. Those same qualities should also win it readers well beyond awards season.

The Observer
Karina Author, Book, Literary Award, Literary Awards

A FRACTURED LAND by MELISSA A. VOLKER longlisted for the Page Turner Award – Book Award 2021!

Fantastic news! Melissa A. Volker’s A Fractured Land has been longlisted for the Page Turner Award – Book Award 2021.

Melissa A. Volker is a reader, writer, beauty therapist and water woman. She blogs about surfing and stand up paddle boarding; writes eco-fiction, romance and short stories. She lives in Cape Town with her husband, two daughters and a cat. Her first eco-romantic thriller, A Fractured Land, was published in the US in 2018 and was republished along with her second novel, Shadow Flicker, by Karavan Press in South Africa in 2019. Shadow Flicker won the Romance Writers Organisation of South Africa’s Strelitzia prize for the most promising manuscript in 2017. Melissa’s short story, ‘Spa Ritual’, was published in the South African anthology: Hair – Weaving and Unpicking Stories of Identity. Her new novelette, The Pool Guy, is coming soon.

Congratulations, Melissa!

Karina Author, Book, Interview

Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett interviewed Karen Jennings for the Guardian

The South African author struggled to find a publisher for her Booker-nominated novel An Island, which only had a print-run of 500 copies. She talks about rejection, her country and believing in herself

Karen Jennings is still in shock. It has been a few days since the announcement that her novel, An Island, has been longlisted for the Booker prize, and the 38-year-old South African author looks as though she’s reeling. Considering the novel’s difficult route to publication, you can understand why. She doesn’t even have an agent.

“It was incredibly difficult to find a publisher,” she says, via video chat from Brazil, where she has spent the pandemic alongside her Brazilian husband, a scientist. Due to being essentially stranded there, she has yet to hold an actual physical copy of the book in her hands. “I finished the novel in 2017. And no one was interested. When I did finally get a small publisher in the UK and a small publisher in South Africa to co-publish, they couldn’t get anyone to review the book. We couldn’t get people to write endorsement quotes, or blurbs.”

Guardian
Karina Author, Book, Interview

Karen Jennings on Afternoon Drive with John Maytham

Listen to Karen Jennings’s moving interview with CapeTalk’s John Maytham:

Karen Jennings on Afternoon Drive with John Maytham

‘Earlier this week, we heard that two South Africans, both of them University of Cape Town graduates, have been long-listed for the prestigious Booker Prize – Karen Jennings and Damon Galgut. Well today, we speak to Karen, who made it onto the prestigious list for her book, “An Island”, which follows the tale of an old lighthouse keeper who finds the unconscious body of a refugee on his beach.’

Karina Author, Book, Prize

AN ISLAND by KAREN JENNINGS longlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize!

Karavan Press is thrilled and deeply honoured to announce that An Island by Karen Jennings has been longlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize. Co-published with UK publisher, Holland House Books, An Island tells the story of Samuel, a lighthouse keeper.

Samuel has lived alone for a long time; one morning he finds the sea has brought someone to offer companionship and to threaten his solitude …

A young refugee washes up unconscious on the beach of a small island inhabited by no one but Samuel, an old lighthouse keeper. Unsettled, Samuel is soon swept up in memories of his former life on the mainland: a life that saw his country suffer under colonisers, then fight for independence, only to fall under the rule of a cruel dictator; and he recalls his own part in its history. In this new man’s presence he begins to consider, as he did in his youth, what is meant by land and to whom it should belong. To what lengths will a person go in order to ensure that what is theirs will not be taken from them?

A novel about guilt and fear, friendship and rejection; about the meaning of home.

“The far southern extremities of our planet produce remarkable, distilled, and ravaged tales. An Island has to be counted as among the most remarkable of these. Karen Jennings offers a chilling, immersive portrait of Samuel, a lighthouse keeper on a remote island off the African continent. He is a man at the edge of history, until the arrival of a refugee stranger returns him to everything he most needs to forget. A gripping, terrifying and unforgettable story.”  — Elleke Boehmer

THE 2021 BOOKER PRIZE LONGLIST ANNOUNCEMENT

HOLLAND HOUSE BOOKS EDITION OF AN ISLAND