Kumukanda by Kayo Chingonyi has won the £30,000 (about $40,635) International Dylan Thomas Prize, which is sponsored by Swansea University and recognizes the "best published literary work in the English language, written by an author aged 39 or under."
The Prize called Kumukanda a "bold collection [that] explores black masculinity and rites of passage for young black men in Britain." Judges chair Dai Smith added: "Kayo Chingonyi has an original and distinctive voice and this collection, mature and moving, shows a young poet mastering form in various ways to reveal content which is both personal and immensely relevant to the social dilemmas of Britain today."
---
Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine by Anne Applebaum (Doubleday) has won the £5,000 (about $6,775) 2017 Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize, which "celebrates the best in non-fiction writing" and is administered by the New College at Oxford University.
Chair of judges Artemis Cooper commented: "In this beautifully-written book, Applebaum takes the reader through one of the most appalling episodes of the Soviet past. Not every historian can look with such an unflinching gaze into the depths of evil and human misery, and write about it with such clarity and compassion."
Applebaum is the only author to win this prize twice: she also won in 2003 for Gulag: A History.