Shepherds and Butchers Wins the K Sello Duiker Memorial Award

by Amanda on Jul 28th, 2010

Umuzi is proud to announce that Chris Marnewick’s Shepherds and Butchers has been awarded the K Sello Duiker Memorial Literary Award, which forms part of the South African Literary Awards. A formal prize-giving ceremony will be held at a function in December 2010.

Founded by the wRite Associates in partnership with the National Ministry of Arts & Culture, the South African Literary Awards endeavour to pay overdue homage and honour to literary practitioners and legends while encouraging the advancement of South Africa’s literary heritage and practice.

Published in 2008, the novel’s other accolades include being shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize (African Region), and the M-Net Literary Awards, as well as winning the University of Johannesburg Prize for the best creative debut work in English.

Shepherds and Butchers is a cliff-hanger courtroom drama that, in a potent blend of fiction and non-fiction, explores the psychology and physical details of capital punishment by hanging as incisively as seldom before.

Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking and writer of the screenplay for the blockbuster movie, says: “The riveting way in which Chris Marnewick has fused fact and fiction and explored the fine line between human frailty and human cruelty, makes Shepherds and Butchers unforgettable.”

More praise for Shepherds and Butchers:

“Unputdownable” – Etienne van Heerden, LitNet
“Possibly the most gripping, most gruelling novel I’ve read” – Vivien Horler, Cape Argus
“Surely one of the most important South African novels of the year” – Andrew Trench, Saturday Dispatch
“Astonishing tour de force” – James Mitchell
“Superb, intensely disturbing novel ought to be mandatory reading” – Gwen Podbrey, SA Jewish Report

Chris Marnewick obtained his B Juris degree from Potchefstroom University in 1970. An LLB from Unisa followed in 1973 and an LLM from the University of KwaZulu-Natal in 1990, which also awarded him his PhD in 1996. As a jurist he was, successively, Clerk of the Court, Prosecutor, Magistrate, Attorney and Advocate. He was admitted to practice in New Zealand and New South Wales and spent five years teaching litigation skills to law graduates in New Zealand. He is an SC at the Durban Bar and lives in Durban. He is the author of Litigation Skills for South African Lawyers (2002) and his most recent work of fiction, The Soldier Who Said No, was published by Umuzi in May 2010.

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