2006 Winners

The winners of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize 2006 were awarded by His Royal Highness, The Prince Edward, Earl of Wessex, KCVO, ADC at a ceremony at the State Library of Victoria on Tuesday 14 March 2006.

Chair of the judging panel Emeritus Professor Chris Wallace-Crabbe commented that 'The judges of the 2006 Commonwealth Writers' Prize were intrigued by the outstanding quality of the works of fiction facing them. Books flowed to the Prize from Guyana to New Zealand, from Malta to Malaysia. We noted that, in particular, the Prize continues to reward new talents in English language fiction'.

Overall winners

Kate Grenville (Australia), The Secret River

Kate Grenville is one of Australia’s most respected novelists. She holds degrees from the University of Sydney and the University of Colorado. She has worked as a film editor, journalist, and teacher, and spent seven years in Europe and the USA working and studying. Her novel Lilian's Story won the Australian/Vogel Award in 1986, Dark Places was shortlisted for the 1995 Miles Franklin Award, and The Idea of Perfection won the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2001.

The Commonwealth Writers' Prize South East Asia and South Pacific region judges described her novel The Secret River as 'an immensely powerful book that returns to the foundational moment of Australian settler history to rethink the nature of settler engagement with the land. There is guilt, trauma, triumph, and regret, all in a narrative that remains riveting and assured'. Kate Grenville follows in the footsteps of Australian winners such as Peter Carey, Richard Flanagan and Murray Bail.

Mark McWatt (Guyana) Suspended Sentences: Fictions of Atonement

Mark McWatt was born in Guyana. He took his first degree at the University of Toronto, and then went to Leeds University to complete a PhD. He is currently Head of the English Department at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill campus, Barbados. He has published two collections of poetry, Interiors (1989) and The Language of Eldorado (1994), which won the Guyana Prize. Suspended Sentences is his first work of fiction. He has published widely in journals on aspects of Caribbean literature and is joint editor of the Oxford Book of Caribbean Verse (2005).

In Suspended Sentences: Fictions of Atonement 'characters circle multiple challenges as they throw off the yoke of colonialism in Guyana'. The judges described his collection of stories as 'refracting light like a powerful and many-facetted diamond'. He is the first Guyanese winner since 1991, when Pauline Melville won the Overall Best Book prize for Shape Shifter.

Regional winners

Chris Wallace-Crabbe noted that 'Among the eight regional prize winners there was an exciting range of formal experiment, and a great play of interesting voices. The eight winning books, which included linked short stories as well as novels, explored country, belief, crisis and identity'.

Best Book

Eurasia - On Beauty by Zadie Smith (UK), Hamish Hamilton
Caribbean and Canada - Alligator by Lisa Moore (Canada), Anansi Press
South East Asia and the South Pacific - The Secret River by Kate Grenville (Australia), Text Publishing
Africa - The Sun by Night by Benjamin Kwakye (Ghana), Africa World Press

Best First Book

Eurasia - Lazy Eye by Donna Daley-Clarke (UK), Scribner
Caribbean and Canada - Suspended Sentences: Fictions of Atonement by Mark Mcwatt (Guyana), Peepal Tree Press
South East Asia and the South Pacific - The Harmony Silk Factory by Tash Aw (Malaysia), Harper Perennial
Africa - Tropical Fish: Stories out of Entebbe by Doreen Baingana (Uganda), University of Massachusetts

Judges

The pan-Commonwealth panel of judges for the overall awards comprised Emeritus Professor Chris Wallace-Crabbe of the University of Melbourne, Australia (Chair) and the chairs of the four regional judging panels:

• Professor Mary Kolawole, Department of English, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria, for the Africa region
• Professor Angela Smith, Department of English Studies, University of Stirling, Scotland, for the Eurasia region
• Professor Aritha van Herk, Department of English, University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada, for the Caribbean and Canada region
• Professor Vijay Mishra, Department of English, Murdoch University, Perth, Australia, for the South East Asia and South Pacific region.