African literature had a winning night at the 2026 British Book Awards, known as the Nibbies, held this evening at the Grosvenor House Hotel in London. Two books with deep ties to African writing and publishing took home prizes at the UK book industry’s most prestigious annual celebration.

Oyinkan Braithwaite’s Cursed Daughters, published by WF Howes and narrated by Weruche Opia, Nnei Opia Clark, and Diana Yekinni, won the Audiobook: Fiction category. The audiobook, a multi-generational story of a family curse, was selected as Audible’s Audiobook of the Month on publication, and its production involved lengthy auditions to find Diana Yekinni, a fluent Yoruba speaker who could voice the character of Ebun authentically. For Braithwaite, the win is a continuation of a remarkable trajectory. Her debut novel My Sister, the Serial Killer won the British Book Award for Crime and Thriller Fiction in 2020, making her one of the very few writers to have won multiple Nibbies across different works and different categories. Cursed Daughters beat competition that included Philip Pullman’s The Rose Field narrated by Michael Sheen and a star-studded adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. Appreciating The Nibbies, Braithwaite said: “I’ve always felt really supported and held up by this industry.”

The second win of the evening came in the Discover category, and it belongs to a book, a publisher, and a story that together make a compelling argument for why independent African publishing matters. The Mercy Step by Marcia Hutchinson, published by Cassava Republic Press, won the Discover Prize, a category specifically designed to amplify books from underrepresented writers and independent publishers. The Mercy Step is Hutchinson’s debut novel. She is in her sixties. Before it found a home with Cassava Republic, it was passed over more than 50 times. Set in Bradford in December 1962, the novel follows Mercy, the youngest child of a Windrush-generation Jamaican family, navigating a household shaped by her father’s quick temper and her mother’s devotion to the Church. Left to herself, Mercy finds solace in books, her imagination, and her faithful toy Dolly, and slowly learns she must act if she wants a different future.

While receiving the award, Hutchinson said: “The Mercy Step was over a decade in the writing… I want to thank my amazing agent. I sent her a few chapters of this and she said: ‘This is the one.’”

Cassava Republic Press is an African-owned, women-led independent publisher with offices in Abuja, Nigeria, and London, UK. Founded in 2006 by Bibi Bakare-Yusuf, the press has published nearly 150 titles, sold over 6 million copies, and translated works into 30 languages across 60+ countries. The win tonight adds to a year of extraordinary recognition for the press: The Mercy Step is also shortlisted for the 2026 Women’s Prize for Fiction, the first time an African and Black women-owned small press has ever reached that shortlist in the prize’s thirty-year history.

We covered all three African shortlistees when the nominations were announced in March, Adichie’s Dream Count in Fiction, Braithwaite’s Cursed Daughters in Audiobook: Fiction, and Hutchinson’s The Mercy Step in Discover. Tonight, two of those three went all the way.

The Nibbies, administered by The Bookseller, have been the leading awards for the UK book trade since their founding in 1990. To win a Book of the Year award, a title must demonstrate a combination of creative genius, brilliant publishing, and outstanding sales, the awards celebrate the whole journey from the author’s mind to the reader’s hand. That The Mercy Step, a book rejected more than fifty times, published by a Nigerian press, written by a debut novelist in her sixties, won on those terms is not a small thing. It is the kind of outcome that reminds you what the Discover category is for.

Congratulations to Oyinkan Braithwaite, Marcia Hutchinson, and everyone at Cassava Republic Press!