The RSL today announces the winner of the RSL Christopher Bland Prize for authors aged over 50. The prize, now in its eighth year, is an annual award of £10,000 given to a debut novelist or non-fiction writer first published aged 50 or over.
Frank Thabani Sayi won this year’s prize for his memoir No Safer Kinder Hatred. Sayi said: ‘This is the vindication of my deeply held conviction that the impact of painful histories doesn’t necessarily recede with time, that our voices do not diminish with age, and that every story, however cumbersome, deserves to be heard.’
Sayi’s memoir tells of a childhood conditioned in the shadow of the mayhem brought about by the structure and dehumanising effects of colonialism, its dreadful legacy, and the impact of civil war. Yet it is full of moving, hilarious, and beautiful stories of innocence, the increasingly hard-won experience of a war-torn childhood, and the development of a man determined to leave this violence behind.
Chair of judges A.L. Kennedy surprised Sayi with the news and told him reading No Safer Kinder Hatred was ‘not just meeting the writer, it’s meeting something deep within you that’s courageous and extraordinary and true’. She added, ‘Reading something terribly hard when you’ve got the company of brilliant writing [means] when you start the book, you’re one person, and when you finish the book, you’re a different person. You’ve had that company, you’ve had that insight, and you’re less alone.’ The full video of Sayi receiving the news of his win can be watched on the RSL YouTube channel here.
Sayi responded: ‘It’s validation that all stories need to be heard, that our pain doesn’t recede with age. That all we need is for others to listen. I think it’s emboldened me in a way that I never felt would happen.’
Alongside Kennedy, fellow judges Derek Owusu and Louise Kennedy chose Sayi as their winner from a shortlist of six books representing fiction and non-fiction:
A Room Above a Shop by Anthony Shapland (Granta Books)
No Safer Kinder Hatred by Frank Thabani Sayi (Quercus Publishing)
The Absence by Budgie (White Rabbit)
The Departed by Sarah Mellor (HarperCollins Publishers)
The Eights by Joanna Miller (Penguin)
The Finest Hotel in Kabul by Lyse Doucet (Hutchinson Heinemann)
The RSL Christopher Bland Prize was first awarded in 2019, thanks to the generosity of the family and friends of Lady Jennie Bland, in memory of Sir Christopher Bland, who died in 2017. Sir Christopher is best known for his leadership in broadcasting, the arts and business. He didn’t start writing until after his retirement, publishing two novels to critical acclaim – Ashes in the Wind and Cathar – as well as the play The Easter Rising.