Imran Garda’s debut novel, The Thunder That Roars, has been announced as the joint winner of the prestigious Olive Schreiner Prize for Prose. The prize is awarded annually by the English Academy of South Africa for a work of prose, poetry or drama.
Garda’s taut and thrilling novel draws on the author’s experience as a well-known international journalist and news anchor with Al Jazeera. The novel grapples with themes of migration and displacement and includes scenes from Lampedusa, a primary entry point to Europe for immigrants from Africa.
The Thunder That Roars was lauded by adjudicators as ‘South African literature [that] soars above the tortuous apartheid history and redefines globalisation. Through the perspective of Yusuf, the main character-focaliser and CNN journalist, the reader is taken on a tour of the decomposing effects of hegemonic institutions. The storyline is energised by a tantalising dramatic irony across different milieus … Like an anti-oxidant, the dramatic irony releases its energy, slowly and effectively, accumulating and resolving tension later in the story when Yusuf makes startling discoveries while on his search enterprise.’
The Thunder That Roars was longlisted for a 2014 Etisalat Prize, and film rights to the novel were optioned in 2015 by Tsitsi Dangarembga, well-known author of Nervous Conditions and founder and CEO of Nyerai Films.
Garda’s novel shares the 2015 Olive Schreiner Prize with Jill Nudelman’s Inheriting the Earth, published by the University of KwaZulu-Natal Press.
ISBN: 978-1-4152-0712-3 I ISBN: 978-1-4152-0534-1 (e-pub)
ISBN: 978-1-4152-0535-8 (PDF) I RRP: R200 I CATEGORY: Fiction
For an interview with Imran Garda, cover images and / or author photographs, contact Ryno Posthumus at 011 327-3550 / rposthumus@penguinrandomhouse.co.za / For more information, visit www.randomstruik.co.za. For information on available rights, contact Aoife Lennon-Ritchie at aoife@lennonliterary.com / 021 447 9797 / www.lennonliterary.com