The University of Johannesburg (UJ) has named the winners of its prestigious 2025 UJ Prize for South African Writing, recognising outstanding English-language works published in 2024.

Poet Siphokazi Jonas was awarded the Debut Prize for her collection Weeping Becomes a River. Judges described the work as one of the few poetry titles to claim the honour and hailed Jonas as: “a new voice in South African poetry, who we believe is a rising star in the literary world.”

The Main Prize was jointly awarded to Barbara Boswell for The Comrade’s Wife and Shubnum Khan for The Lost Love of Akbar Manzil. Chair of the judging panel, Professor Ronit Frenkel, said the two novels highlighted the breadth of contemporary South African fiction: “spanning realism to the gothic.”

The Comrade’s Wife follows a turbulent marriage between a rising politician and his wife, an academic, told from her perspective, while The Lost Love of Akbar Manzil is set in a crumbling mansion in Durban, telling the story of multiple generations of families who live there.

The prize is open to South African authors or foreign writers who have been living in South Africa for at least six months.

The prizes were decided after a rigorous adjudication process involving six academics from the UJ, the University of Pretoria, and the University of the Witwatersrand. Frenkel noted that 2024 produced an especially strong field, with entries ranging across genres from both established authors and emerging talent. “It has been a very difficult year to assess the entries as we had so many excellent choices,” she said.

Boswell and Khan will each receive R75 000, while Jonas receives R45 000. All shortlisted nominees in both categories will also receive certificates of recognition.

The UJ Prize, now firmly established on the South African literary calendar, continues to highlight the diversity and dynamism of the country’s writing scene, giving equal space to new voices and established names.