Department of English Literary Studies Associate Professor Barbara Boswell has won the National Arts and Culture Awards Prize for Outstanding Book, Fiction (2025) for her novel, The Comrade’s Wife. The awards “recognised excellence across South Africa’s creative industries, from performance and visual arts to literature, design, film and cultural heritage”. Boswell received the award at a ceremony hosted by the Department of Sports, Arts and Culture last week.

In addition to winning the NACA Award for Outstanding Fiction, The Comrade’s Wife is shortlisted for the University of Johannesburg Literary Prize and the CANEX Prize for African Publishing for 2025. It is also longlisted for the Sunday Times Literary Prize for Fiction.

The novel has been described as “tender, delightful, frightening. A testimony to Boswell’s inexhaustible vision,” by feminist critic Professor Pumla Dineo Gqola, and as “beautifully sculpted and tenderly told,” by novelist Zukiswa Wanner. It critiques black middle-class ascent to political power in in post-apartheid South Africa, highlighting themes of political and personal betrayal.