UKZN Alumnus Wins International Writing Award

BY: .

Award-winning author and UKZN alumnus, Ms Kass Ghayouri is the grand prize winner in the 50 Great Writers You Should Be Reading Awards competition run annually by the Guardian newspaper in England.

Ghayouri was chosen by public vote from a field of hundreds of authors.

Her win was for her novel An Era of Error, which is about an Indian girl growing up in a period of racial segregation enforced through the legislation of the apartheid government in South Africa from the late 1940s until democracy in 1994.

Said Ghayouri: ‘It is imperative to conquer fear and articulate the problem clearly, for the international audience to recognise the issue. In retrospect, the world will gain momentous strength to help eradicate political turmoil and acts of ethnic cleansing or racism.’

Another of her novels, A Note from the No Fire Zone, was awarded five stars by Readers’ Favourite Awards. This novel has gained the attention of politicians worldwide and is a memoir of a medical doctor, who worked to alleviate pain and suffering in the war zone in Sri Lanka.

Both of these books are being studied by Grade 12 Literature pupils in Canada and worldwide.

Some of her other books include Fugitives Baby, Punch Buggy, Governess Poetry and Illustration, Universe Poetry and Illustration, and I Tried but I Died.

Words: Melissa Mungroo

Photograph: Supplied