British-Ghanaian author, Yepoka Yeebo has been unveiled as the winner of the Jhalak Prize 2024 for her book, Anansi’s Gold: The Man Who Swindled The World, published by Bloomsbury.
First awarded in March 2017, the Jhalak Prize and its sister award Jhalak Children’s YA Prize founded in 2020, seek to celebrate books by writers of colour in the UK and Ireland.. The Jhalak Children’s and YA Prize accepts books for children, teens and young adults including picture books, chapter books, graphic novels, poetry, non-fiction, and all other genres by writers of colour and aimed at young readers. The Prize awards £1000 to each winner along with a unique work of art created by artists chosen for the annual Jhalak Art Residency.
In her award winning book, Yeebo weaves the far-fetched tale of John Ackah Blay-Miezah, a Ghanaian grifter responsible for a truly massive con. Blay-Miezah claimed that he had sole access to an enormous fortune in gold that Ghana’s first president, Kwame Nkrumah, had squirreled away while in power. She unfolds a riveting account of Cold War entanglements, international finance, and postcolonial betrayal, revealing how what we call history writes itself into being, one lie at a time.
Yeepoka Yeebo is a British-Ghanaian journalist whose work has appeared in Bloomberg Businessweek, The Guardian, Quartz, and many other publications, and she has been interviewed on PRI’s The World and NPR’s All Things Considered. A graduate of Columbia University’s School of Journalism and the University of London, she divides her time between London, UK, and Accra, Ghana.
Anansi’s Gold, Yepoka’s first book, was shortlisted for the 2024 Mark Lynton History Prize, featured as one of The New York Times Book Review’s 100 Notable Books of 2023, and named a 2023 best book of the year by The New Yorker, Time, Slate, NPR, Newsweek, The Economist and more.
Click here to read our past article on her journey to winning the prize.
Congratulations Yeepoka!
Bongiwe T. Maphosa
Bongiwe Maphosa is a budding author with a passion for storytelling. With her thought-provoking narratives, she takes her readers on a literary adventure. Bongiwe's works on the human condition from a fresh perspective have earned her recognition and publications in the Avbob Poetry Anthology of 2019, The Writer's Club of South Africa 2021, and JAY Lit in 2021. She hopes to cement her place in the literary community.
