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The 2026 Sunday Times Literary Awards longlist has been announced, featuring 42 books across fiction and non-fiction categories.

The Sunday Times Literary Awards are annual South African literary prizes that recognise outstanding works of fiction and non-fiction published in South Africa. The awards were first established in 1989 with the Alan Paton Award for Non-Fiction, and later expanded to include fiction in 2001. They were restructured to align with the current Sunday Times Literary Awards format in 2015. 

Non-Fiction

Chaired by Shylock Matsunyane, deputy manager at Exclusive Books Rosebank and a longtime champion of local authors and reading culture, joined by futurist and economist Bronwyn Williams, co-author of The Future Starts Now, and Lorraine Sithole, literary advocate, festival curator, and founder of the BookWorms Book Club and the Launchpad Foundation, the non-fiction longlist is as follows:

1. Death in Pretoria: Untold Stories of Political Activists Executed During Apartheid by Peter Auf der Heyde
2. A Clergyman’s Daughter: A Memoir by Hannah Botsis
3. Behind Prison Walls: Unlocking a Safer South Africa by Edwin Cameron, Rebecca Gore & Sohela Surajpal
4. Attacking the Heart of Apartheid: The ANC’s MK Special Operations Unit by  Yunus Carrim
5. Making a Life: Young Men on Johannesburg’s Urban Margins by Hannah J. Dawson
6. Belonging: A History of Indian South Africans by Ashwin Desai & Goolam Vahed
7. The Smallest Ones: Two Sisters’ Escape from DRC Rebels and Their Pursuit of Freedom by Popina Khumanda
8. Blood’s Inner Rhyme: An Autobiographical Novel by Antjie Krog
9. How to Build a House in the Mountains by Roger Lucey
10. Faces and Phases of Resilience: A Memoir of a Special Kind by Tinyiko Maluleke
11. Out of This World and Into the Next: Notes from a Physicist on Space Exploration by Adriana Marais
12. The Nightwatchman: Representing Black Men in Colonial Africa by Hlonipha Mokoena
13. Under Smuts’s Rule: Jan Smuts and His Impact on Black South Africans Bongani Ngqulunga
14. Darker Shade of Pale: Shtetl to Colony by Debra Posel
15. Led by Shepherds: An Initiate’s Memoir by Jeffrey Rakabe
16. Undone: Healing from Botched Cosmetic Surgery: A Memoir by Michelle Roniak
17. Men & Mental Health: Shattering the Silence by Marion Scher
18. It Always Seems Impossible: My Fight to Build and Save Education Africa by James Urdang
19. We Two From Heaven: A Memoir by James Whyle
20. The Shadow State: Why Babita Deokaran Had to Die by Jeff Wicks
21. The Deal: Inside the Talks that Shaped South Africa’s Future by Mandy Wiener
22. The Chaos Precinct: Johannesburg as a Port City by Tanya Zack

Fiction

Chaired by playwright and novelist Craig Higginson, whose novel The Ghost of Sam Webster recently won the HSS Award for Fiction, joined by Zimbabwean author Sue Nyathi, whose debut novel The Polygamist has been adapted into a Netflix series, and broadcaster and author Joanne Joseph, whose novel Children of Sugarcane won the South African Book Awards for both fiction and overall winner, the fiction longlist is as follows:

1. 6h00 Somewhere and Many Hours Later Somewhere Else by Barbara Adair (Hands-On Books)
2. Salt Water Pool Boy by Peter-Adrian Altini (Karavan Press)
3. The Nicotine Gospel by Sven Axelrad (Umuzi)
4. Ice Shock by Elleke Boehmer (Karavan Press)
5. Diplomatic Ties by Mpho Boshego (Pan Macmillan)
6. Not Another Samoosa Run! by Nadia Cassim (Kwela Books)
7. Hell of a Country by David Cornwell (Kwela Books)
8. An Act of Murder by Tom Eaton (Penguin)
9. The Whale’s Last Song by Joanne Fedler (Modjaji Books)
10. Song of the Slave Girl by Ashraf Kagee (Jacana Media)
11. The Fragile Mental Health of Strong Women by Michelle Kekana (Jacana Media)
12. Out of the Dead Lands by Conrad Kemp (Mirari Press)
13. Bosadi by Kopano Matlwa (Jacana Media)
14. Canary by Onze Mazibuko (Penguin)
15. Buried in the Chest by Lindani Mbunyuza-Memani (Jacana Media)
16. Book People by Paige Nick (Pan Macmillan)
17. The Immortalites by Claire Robertson (Umuzi)
18. All the Saints by Wesley Roodt (Jacana Media)
19. Unsolicited by Andrea Shaw (Jacana Media)
20. The Fourth Boy by Andrew Robert Wilson (Karavan Press)

The shortlists and winners will be announced in the coming months. For more information, click here.

Bakare Oluwatobiloba