Yepoka Yeebo and Hiba Noor Khan win the Jhalak Prizes

Yepoka Yeebo has won the 2024 Jhalak Prize for Anansi’s Gold: The Man Who Swindled the World (Bloomsbury), while Hiba Noor Khan has been announced as the winner of the Jhalak Children’s & Young Adult Prize for Safiyyah’s War (Andersen Press).

The two winners were announced on Thursday 30th May 2024 at a ceremony held at the British Library. Each winner was awarded £1,000 and received a work of art created by Samer Abdelnour and Yousef Saif, as part of the ongoing Jhalak Art Residency. 

Yeebo’s winning book was praised by the judges as a story that “vividly illuminates Ghana’s complex history”. Prize director Sunny Singh said: “While this year’s winners are very different in form, style, theme and content, they speak urgently and yet timelessly to a world in turmoil. Yepoka Yeebo’s Anansi’s Gold is an exhilarating journey through the life – and almost unbelievable adventures – of one of the world’s greatest conmen.”

Meanwhile, Khan’s Safiyyah’s War is set in Paris during the Second World War, and was described as “an exquisitely written, hopeful, and necessary book for these impossibly difficult times”.

Singh added: “Hiba Noor Khan’s Safiyyah’s War is an extraordinary story of courage, hope and humanity in the face of unspeakable horrors. These are books for the world we live in, and the one we must imagine, and build for the future – books to read now, pass on to the future, and treasure forever.”

The artwork that was given as a prize for the 2024 Jhalak Prize, called “Refaat’s Angel”, has been created by artist Abdelnour in memory of Refaat Alareer, a professor and writer from Gaza who was killed in an airstrike. “For this piece I wanted to honour Refaat Alareer and his legacy,” Abdelnour said. “Like millions of people the world over, I am deeply moved by his poem, ‘If I must die’, and at some point, I realised that I might be working towards materialising a character from it.”

Moreover, the artwork created for the winner of the 2024 Jhalak Children’s and YA Prize by Saif, titled “The Eye of Time and the Buraq”, has been inspired by memory and Palestinian history.

This year sees the return of the partnership launched in 2021 with National Book Tokens, which aims to increase awareness and support for the nominated titles among bookshops across the UK and Ireland. The organisers of the prize have also partnered with The Rabbit Hole Bookshop in North Lincolnshire to bring author events to school children this summer.

The 2023 Jhalak Prize was won by Travis Alabanza for None of the Above (Canongate), and the The Jhalak Children’s and Young Adult Prize was awarded to Danielle Jawando for When Our Worlds Collided (Simon and Schuster).