2008 Regional Winners
2008 Commonwealth Writers' Prize regional winners
AFRICA
Best Book: Karen King-Aribisala (Nigeria) The Hangman's Game Peepal Tree Press 
A young Guyanese woman sets out to write an historical novel based on the 1823 Demerara Slave Rebellion and the fate of an English missionary who is condemned to hang for his alleged part in the uprising, but who dies in prison before his execution. She has wanted to document historical fact through fiction, but the characters she invents make an altogether messier intrusion into her life with their conflicting interests and ambivalent motivations. As an African-Guyanese in a country where a Black ruling elite oppresses the population, she begins to wonder what lay behind her 'ancestral enslavement', why fellow Africans had 'exchanged silver for the likes of me'. As a committed Christian she also wonders why God has allowed slavery to happen. Beset by her unruly characters and these questions, the novel is stymied. In an attempt to unblock it she decides that she should take up a family contact to spend some time in Nigeria, to experience her African origins at first hand...
Best First Book: Sade Adeniran (Nigeria ) Imagine This SW Books
Imagine This is the story of a young girl's journey from childhood to adulthood. Lola Ogunwole leaves all that is familiar behind in London and is sent to live in a village in Nigeria. Dogged by events she has no control over Lola's journal is a compelling story about one girl's resilience against the odds, which culminates in the bittersweet fulfilment of a long held desire.
CANADA AND CARIBBEAN
Best Book: Lawrence Hill (Canada) The Book of Negroes HarperCollins Publishers 
Abducted as an 11-year-old child from her village in West Africa and forced to walk for months to the sea in a coffle—a string of slaves— Aminata Diallo is sent to live as a slave in South Carolina. But years later, she forges her way to freedom, serving the British in the Revolutionary War and registering her name in the historic “Book of Negroes.” This book, an actual document, provides a short but immensely revealing record of freed Loyalist slaves who requested permission to leave the US for resettlement in Nova Scotia, only to find that the haven they sought was steeped in an oppression all of its own. Aminata's eventual return to Sierra Leone—passing ships carrying thousands of slaves bound for America—is an engrossing account of an obscure but important chapter in history that saw 1,200 former slaves embark on a harrowing back-to-Africa odyssey.
Best First Book: C.S. Richardson (Canada) The End of the Alphabet Doubleday Canada 
Meet Ambrose Zephyr: thought of by friends as better than some; by his wife Zipper as in need of no adjustment. On or about his fiftieth birthday, Ambrose discovers that he has one month to live. And so he and Zipper embark on a whirlwind expedition to the places he has most loved or longed to see, A through Z, Amsterdam to Zanzibar. But after Istanbul, their journey takes an unplanned turn when Ambrose seeks out the destination most fittingly called home.
EUROPE AND SOUTH ASIA
Best Book: Indra Sinha (India) Animal's People Simon and Schuster 
Ever since That Night, the residents of Khaufpur have lived a perilous existence. The water they drink, the ground they walk on and the atmosphere they breathe is poisoned. Nobody has received compensation or help for the chemical leak, least of all Animal, as he is known, whose spine twisted at a young age, leaving him to walk on all fours. His mind is full of foul, insidious thoughts, but the bitterness is mixed with a longing to know human affection and, more urgently, sex. He inhabits a dark kind of half-life.
Best First Book: Tahmima Anam (Bangladesh) A Golden Age John Murray 
It is spring 1971 in East Pakistan and the country is on the brink of a revolution. Rehana Haque is throwing a party for her children, Sohail and Maya, in the rose-filled garden of the house she has built, while beyond her doorstep the city is buzzing with excitement after recent elections. None of the guests at Rehana's party can foresee what will happen in the days and months that follow, and her family's life is about to change forever.
SOUTH EAST ASIA AND SOUTH PACIFIC
Best Book: Steven Carroll (Australia) The Time We Have Taken HarperCollins 
'That exotic tribe was us. And the time we have taken, our moment.'
One summer morning in 1970, Peter van Rijn, proprietor of the television and wireless shop, pronounces his Melbourne suburb one hundred years old.
That same morning, Rita is awakened by a dream of her husband's snores, yet it is years since Vic moved north. Their son, Michael, has left for the city, and is entering the awkward terrain of first love.
As the suburb prepares to celebrate progress, Michael's friend Mulligan is commissioned to paint a mural of the area's history. But what vision of the past will his painting reveal?
Meanwhile, Rita's sometime friend Mrs Webster confronts the mystery of her husband's death. And Michael discovers that innocence can only be sustained for so long.
Best First Book: Karen Foxlee (Australia) The Anatomy of Wings University of Queensland Press
Jennifer Day tells the story in The Anatomy of Wings. She's a ten year old obsessed with birds, facts and great world catastrophes. And she is struggling to make sense of her teenage sister sudden death. In The Anatomy of Wings Jennifer recounts the final months of Beth's life, unravelling them like a mystery, while on her own journey to regain her singing voice. Through Jennifer's eyes we see one girl's failure to cross the threshold into adulthood and a family slowly falling apart.
Find the regional press releases in the News section
