This year we celebrate 36 years of the Sunday Times Literary Awards, recognising local non-fiction since 1989 and fiction since 2001. Books are one of the vital pillars of the Sunday Times, and over the past three decades the awards have become synonymous with truth-telling, holding the powerful to account, and books that transport us to the past, the future, known and unknown worlds, safe places, dangerous spaces, adventures and a mélange of emotions.
Since their inception, the annual Sunday Times Literary Awards have become established as the most prestigious South African prizes for local works of non-fiction and fiction.
The non-fiction award criteria asks that “the winner should demonstrate the illumination of truthfulness, especially those forms of it that are new, delicate, unfashionable and fly in the face of power; compassion; elegance of writing; and intellectual and moral integrity”.
From thought leaders to memoirists and authors who take sociopolitical risks, these accounts cast a light on who we are as a people.
In 2001, the Sunday Times fiction prize was introduced, encouraging and recognising excellence in novels with stories that explore our multifaceted country in a multitude of ways, with the stipulation that the winning title should be one of “rare imagination and style ... a tale so compelling as to become an enduring landmark of contemporary fiction”.
Last year, Shubnum Khan took home the fiction prize for The Lost Love of Akbar Manzil (Pan Macmillan/Picador South Africa). “Khan captures the history and lived experiences of South Africa’s Indian community with unparalleled erudition, honesty and sensitivity,” said the judges. The story unfolds in Akbar Manzil, a haunted and rundown seaside mansion in Durban, nearly a century old. The narrative meanders through different epochs, from the early 20th century to the present.
“I never intended to write a Durban Gothic novel — all I knew was I wanted to write a love story with elements of magic, tragedy and a big haunted house by the sea,” Khan wrote of the genesis of her novel in the Sunday Times. “I did know it was going to be set in Durban because I’ve lived in this city my whole life and I’ve come to understand things about the weather, the sea, the green in the trees and what it means to stay in a place where everyone seems to leave. I knew I wanted to showcase a place that often gets neglected in local literature, but that was about all I knew in the beginning.”
The winner of the non-fiction award was Khumisho Moguerane for Morafe: Person, Family and Nation in Colonial Bechuanaland,1880s–1950s (Jacana Media). In her winning title, Moguerane explores two generations of the Molema family. They were “border people” who straddled what would become present-day South Africa and Botswana.
“Every generation confronts the question of how, and under which circumstances, we can pull away from duty and pursue our own personal desires,” Moguerane shared in her shortlist Q&A with the paper. The Molemas’ records offer seven decades of how one family grappled with this universal dilemma, especially fathers and sons. The Molemas’ record gave me an opportunity to foreground the everyday negotiations of “connectedness” between intimates, especially between fathers and sons, as the moral dilemma at the heart of our political history."
The judges said: “This book is a historical landmark, a watershed in the shape and direction of African studies.”
This is a call for entries
Submissions are invited from publishers for the 2026 Sunday Times Literary Awards for non-fiction and fiction.
- For submission rules and procedures, and to download 2026 entry forms, visit https://www.timeslive.co.za/sunday-times/books
- Click here for the submission rules and procedures for non-fiction.
- Click here for the submission rules and procedures for fiction.
- The list of titles that publishers wish to enter should reach the conveners by email by April 27 2026.
- Publishers are to provide any full-length fiction or non-fiction work relating to Southern Africa published between December 1, 2024 and December 1, 2025.
- Publishers are requested to email a list of FOUR TITLES, per imprint. Please submit a list of other titles published that are eligible.
- All entry forms must be sent to Mila de Villiers of the Sunday Times, at mila@book.co.za by no later than Monday, April 27 2026.
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