A memoir by Jamaican author Safiya Sinclair has won the award for outstanding Caribbean book of the past year.
How to Say Babylon is the winner of the overall 2024 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, which comes with a cash award of US$10,000, sponsored by One Caribbean Media.
Published in the UK by Fourth Estate and in the US by Simon & Schuster, How to Say Babylon was described by the prize judges as “a moving work of intense power … demonstrating a remarkable command of narrative, from the minute level of the sentence to the seemingly effortless management of a story arc of epic scope.”
Sinclair’s book was previously named non-fiction category winner for the OCM Bocas Prize, contending for the overall award with the poetry and fiction winners. It is only the second time in the fourteen-year history of the Prize that a non-fiction book has won the overall award. Sinclair is no stranger to the OCM Bocas Prize, having won the award for poetry in 2017 with her debut book Cannibal.
Acclaimed Haitian-American author Edwidge Danticat, chief judge for the prize, made the announcement during the award ceremony on Saturday 27 April during this year’s NGC Bocas Lit Fest. The ceremony also honoured poetry winner Nicole Sealey (for her book The Ferguson Report: An Erasure) and fiction winner Kevin Jared Hosein (for his novel Hungry Ghosts).
The ceremony, held at Esperanza Alta in St. Ann’s, also paid tribute to the winner of the 2024 Bocas Henry Swanzy Award for Distinguished Service to Caribbean Letters, the Guyanese-British publisher Arif Ali, founder of Hansib Publications.
Chief judge Edwidge Danticat was joined on the OCM Bocas Prize final judging panel by St. Lucian writer Canisia Lubrin, Trinidad-born novelist Rabindranath Maharaj, and Guyana-born academic D. Alissa Trotz.
In their formal citation, the judges said How to Say Babylon “is a memoir that reminds us of the expansive possibilities of creative non-fiction, bringing to the fore, with unforgettable poetic verve, a voice that is fierce, courageous, deeply intelligent, and empathetic, its nerve endings vibrating out from a specific experience of Rastafarianism into the currents of the wider world. Embodying the finest traditions within Caribbean writing, yet standing on its own as a unique and astonishing work of witness, this is a work of reparation attending to both uneasy colonial legacies and difficult contemporary departures.”
How to Say Babylon was previously named winner of a US National Book Critics Circle Award, and is a finalist for The Women’s Prize for Nonfiction. Sinclair, who grew up in Montego Bay, is currently based in the United States.
The 2024 NGC Bocas Lit Fest concludes its four-day programme on Sunday 28 April, with events running all day at the National Library of Trinidad and Tobago. The finale of the festival is the 2024 First Citizens National Poetry Slam, at Queen’s Hall. See www.bocaslitfest.com for further programme details.
Past winners of the OCM Bocas Prize
Ayanna Lloyd Banwo’s novel When We Were Birds (2023); Celeste Mohammed’s novel-in-stories Pleasantview (2022); Canisia Lubrin’s poetry collection The Dyzgraphxst (2021); Richard Georges’ poetry collection Epiphaneia (2020); Kevin Adonis Browne’s essay and photography collection High Mas: Carnival and the Poetics of Caribbean Culture (2019); Jennifer Rahim’s short fiction collection Curfew Chronicles (2018); Kei Miller’s novel Augustown (2017); Olive Senior’s short fiction collection The Pain Tree (2016); Vladimir Lucien’s debut poetry collection Sounding Ground (2015); Robert Antoni’s novel As Flies to Whatless Boys (2014); Monique Roffey’s novel Archipelago (2013); and Earl Lovelace’s novel Is Just a Movie (2012). The late Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott was the winner of the inaugural prize in 2011, for the poetry collection White Egrets.
The National Gas Company of Trinidad and Tobago is title sponsor of the NGC Bocas Lit Fest; OCM, First Citizens, the Ministry of Tourism, Culture and the Arts, and the British Council are main sponsors; Massy Foundation, UWI, and the JB Fernandes Memorial Trust are sponsors.