South African poet, novelist, short-story writer, and literary scholar Unathi Slasha has been named the winner of the 2025 Iskanchi Book Prize for his novel The Hollow Sound of Lightweight Bodies.
The award was announced during a lively virtual event on June 29, which featured readings from shortlisted writers and spirited engagement from an audience of readers, writers, and literary enthusiasts.
The Iskanchi Book Prize celebrates bold and imaginative writing that pushes the boundaries of African literature. It offers a platform for writers who interrogate language, history, and the possibilities of storytelling, while spotlighting daring voices across the continent and the African diaspora.
Slasha’s winning novel documents the disturbing and dreamlike life of Mxabanisi Bulawayo, a 21-year-old technician at Despatch Crematorium by night and an amateur obituarist by day. His reality is upended when he encounters the mythic Baba Bouka, a keeper of ancient animals and dream creatures who challenges everything he thought he knew about life in Ward 52.
Blending folklore, fantasy, gossip, and grief, The Hollow Sound of Lightweight Bodies is a speculative and irreverent work that defies easy moralities. Written in what Slasha calls the “anecdotale”, a style fusing anecdote and the fantastical, the novel confronts violence, corruption, despondence, and death without the safety of political correctness.
Congratulations Unathi Slasha!
Bakare Oluwatobiloba
I write to educate, motivate and define history with literature. Just being me!
