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Since 1987 the Commonwealth Writers Prize has been awarded by the Commonwealth Foundation to "reward and encourage the upsurge of new Commonwealth fiction, and to ensure that works of merit reach a wider audience outside their own country." Determinedly cosmopolitan, it holds each final judging and award ceremony in a different one of the 53 Commonwealth countries. Its shortlisting procedure is designed to ensure this cosmopolitanism. For the purposes of the award the Commonwealth is divided into four regions, Africa, the Caribbean and Canada, Eurasia (which includes the United Kingdom), and Southeast Asia and the South Pacific. In each region a best book and a best first book are chosen: these comprise the overall shortlist. The regional winners each receive a prize of £1000; the winner of the book of the year receives £ 10,000, and the winner of the best first book receives £3,000
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| 1987 | Olive Senior, Summer Lightning (Jamaica) | Witi Ihimaera, The Matriarch (New Zealand) |
| 1988 | Festus Iyayi, Heroes (Nigeria) | George Turner, The Sea and Summer (Australia) |
| 1989 | Janet Frame, The Carpathians (New Zealand) | Bonnie Burnard, Women of Influence (Canada) |
| 1990 | Mordecai Richler, Solomon Gursky Was Here (Canada) | John Cranna, Visitors (New Zealand) |
| 1991 | David Malouf, The Great World (Australia) | Pauline Melville, Shape Shifter (Guyana) |
| 1992 | Rohinton Mistry, Such a Long Journey (Canada) | Robert Antoni, Divina Trace (the Bahamas) |
| 1993 | Alex Miller, The Ancestor Game (Australia) | Githa Hariharan, The Thousand Faces of Night (India) |
| 1994 | Vikram Seth, A Suitable Boy (India) | Keith Oatley, The Case of Emily V (United Kingdom) |
| 1995 | Louis de Bernières, Captain Corelli's Mandolin (UK) | Adib Khan, Seasonal Adjustments (Pakistan) |
| 1996 | Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance (Canada) | Vidram Chandra, Red Earth and Pouring Rain (India) |
| 1997 | Earl Lovelace, Salt (Trinidad) | Ann-Marie MacDonald, Fall on Your Knees (Canada) |
| 1998 | Peter Carey, Jack Maggs (Australia) | Tim Wynveen, Angel Falls (Canada) |
| 1999 | Murray Bail, Eucalyptus (Australia) | Kerri Sakamoto, The Electrical Field (Canada) |
| 2000 | J. M. Coetzee, Disgrace (South Africa) | Jeffrey Moore, Prisoner in a Red-Rose Chain (Canada) |
| 2001 | Peter Carey, True History of the Kelly Gang (Australia) | Zadie Smith, White Teeth (U.K.) |
| 2002 | Richard Flanagan, Gould's Book of Fish (Australia) | Manu Herbstein, Ama, A Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade (South Africa) |
| 2003 | Austin Clarke, The Polished Hoe (Canada) | Sarah Hall, Haweswater (UK) |
| 2004 | Caryl Phillips, A Distant Shore (UK) | Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (UK) |
| 2005 | Andrea Levy, Small Island (UK) | Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Purple Hibiscus (Nigeria) |
| 2006 | >Kate Grenville, The Secret River (Australia) | Mark McWatt, Suspended Sentences: Fictions of Atonement (Guyana) |
| 2007 | Lloyd Jones, Mister Pip (New Zealand) | D. Y. Bechard, Vandal Love (Canada) |
* For 1987 and 1988, the second category is just "runner-up," rather than best first book.
Follow this link to the Commonwealth Foundation
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