The Commonwealth Writers' Prize, established in 1987, gave out a prize each year for best book and then also best first book -- first announcing regional finalists, and then picking a winner from these.
Sure, it had its limitations -- that whole Commonwalth crap, and a written-in-English requirement -- but the lists of winners wasn't too shabby: Janet Frame, Mordecai Richler, David Malouf, Vikram Seth, Rohinton Mistry (a two-time winner), Peter Carey, Murray Bail, J. M. Coetzee, Peter Carey for best book, and, for example, Vikram Chandra, Zadie Smith, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Tahmima Anam, and Mohammed Hanif for best first book.
All in all, a respectable list, no ?
Well, they discontinued the general book prize in 2012, and for the past two years it's just been the 'Commonwealth Book Prize', the re-styled best first book prize (Shehan Karunatilaka took it in 2012 for Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew) -- but now they've announced they've axed that too. All that's left is the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, "awarded for the best piece of unpublished short fiction (2000-5000 words)".
No doubt there are resource issues (i.e. the lack thereof), etc., but it's still damn disappointing. We already lost the Pacific Rim-focused Kiriyama Prize (last awarded 2008) and the pan-African Noma Award (last awarded 2009), and while there have been some new prizes that cover some of the same territories as these, it's still a shame.
Well, they discontinued the general book prize in 2012, and for the past two years it's just been the 'Commonwealth Book Prize', the re-styled best first book prize (Shehan Karunatilaka took it in 2012 for Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew) -- but now they've announced they've axed that too. All that's left is the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, "awarded for the best piece of unpublished short fiction (2000-5000 words)".
No doubt there are resource issues (i.e. the lack thereof), etc., but it's still damn disappointing. We already lost the Pacific Rim-focused Kiriyama Prize (last awarded 2008) and the pan-African Noma Award (last awarded 2009), and while there have been some new prizes that cover some of the same territories as these, it's still a shame.