The winners of the 10th National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences (NIHSS) awards were announced on 27 March 2025. These awards are presented every year to honour the significant contributions of groundbreaking research, powerful storytelling, and transformative scholarship. We are proud to celebrate with two of our writers, Charl-Pierre Naudé and Lynthia Julius, for receiving NIHSS awards for their creative works.
Charl-Pierre Naudé, participant in the Brussels to Karoo residency in 2024, received the Best Novel award in the fiction category for his novel The Equality of Shadows.
The Equality of Shadows by Charl-Pierre Naudé
The Equality of Shadows is a compelling novel – in some places uproariously funny, in others filled with deep pathos – about the vagaries of identity, love, and time. It is both a translation and fully-fledged ‘reimagining’ of his Afrikaans novel Die ongelooflike onskuld van Dirkie Verwey and functions as both meditation and sharp commentary on the creative process, identity and why stories are so important to who and what we are.
Lynthia Julius, participant in the PEN it down residency in 2019, received the award for Best Poetry in the fiction category for her poetry collection Kinderlê.
Kinderlê by Lynthia Julius
The poems in Kinderlê are about the vulnerability of children, pregnancy loss, gender issues, love and erotica, and mental health. The title takes its name from a monument at Steinkopf in the Northern Cape in remembrance of the children who were killed there – a historical event that is not widely known. Julius’s poems are often in conversation with her literary forbearers and involve current socio-politics. She enriches Afrikaans with the use of Gariep-Afrikaans and Nama vocabulary.
A hearty congratulations to Naudé and Julius. May your work continue to reach people and shape our understanding of the world.
