The longlists for the 2026 Sunday Times Literary Awards have been announced, with 22 non-fiction titles and 20 works of fiction making the cut. The announcement was made on May 23 at the Kingsmead Book Festival in Johannesburg. This year marks a double milestone for South Africa’s most prestigious annual literary prizes: the 36th anniversary of the non-fiction award and the 25th year of the fiction prize. The non-fiction award is given to a book that demonstrates “the illumination of truthfulness, especially those forms of it that are new, delicate, unfashionable and fly in the face of power,” alongside “compassion, elegance of writing, and intellectual and moral integrity.” The fiction prize seeks “a tale so compelling as to become an enduring landmark of contemporary fiction.”

The non-fiction panel is chaired by Shylock Matsunyane, deputy manager at Exclusive Books Rosebank and a longtime champion of local authors and reading culture, joined by futurist and economist Bronwyn Williams, co-author of The Future Starts Now, and Lorraine Sithole, literary advocate, festival curator, and founder of the BookWorms Book Club and the Launchpad Foundation. The fiction panel is chaired by playwright and novelist Craig Higginson, whose novel The Ghost of Sam Webster recently won the HSS Award for Fiction, joined by Zimbabwean author Sue Nyathi, whose debut The Polygamist has been adapted into a Netflix series, and broadcaster and author Joanne Joseph, whose novel Children of Sugarcane won the South African Book Awards for both fiction and overall winner.

Here is the full non-fiction longlist

Death in Pretoria: Untold Stories of Political Activists Executed During Apartheid — Peter Auf der Heyde (Penguin Non-fiction)

A Clergyman’s Daughter: A Memoir — Hannah Botsis (Modjaji Books)

Behind Prison Walls: Unlocking a Safer South Africa — Edwin Cameron, Rebecca Gore, and Sohela Surajpal (Tafelberg)

Attacking the Heart of Apartheid: The ANC’s MK Special Operations Unit — Yunus Carrim (Penguin Non-fiction)

Making a Life: Young Men on Johannesburg’s Urban Margins — Hannah J. Dawson (Wits University Press)

Belonging: A History of Indian South Africans — Ashwin Desai and Goolam Vahed (Jonathan Ball Publishers)

The Smallest Ones: Two Sisters’ Escape from DRC Rebels and Their Pursuit of Freedom — Popina Khumanda (Penguin Non-fiction)

Blood’s Inner Rhyme: An Autobiographical Novel — Antjie Krog (Penguin Non-fiction)

How to Build a House in the Mountains — Roger Lucey (Karavan Press)

Faces and Phases of Resilience: A Memoir of a Special Kind — Tinyiko Maluleke (Tracey McDonald Publishers)

Out of This World and Into the Next: Notes from a Physicist on Space Exploration — Adriana Marais (Profile Books)

The Nightwatchman: Representing Black Men in Colonial Africa — Hlonipha Mokoena (Wits University Press)

Under Smuts’s Rule: Jan Smuts and His Impact on Black South Africans — Bongani Ngqulunga (Penguin Non-fiction)

Darker Shade of Pale: Shtetl to Colony — Debra Posel (Wits University Press)

Led by Shepherds: An Initiate’s Memoir — Jeffrey Rakabe (Jacana Media)

Undone: Healing from Botched Cosmetic Surgery: A Memoir — Michelle Roniak (Melinda Ferguson Books)

Men & Mental Health: Shattering the Silence — Marion Scher (Bookstorm)

It Always Seems Impossible: My Fight to Build and Save Education Africa — James Urdang (Bookstorm)

We Two From Heaven: A Memoir — James Whyle (Jonathan Ball Publishers)

The Shadow State: Why Babita Deokaran Had to Die — Jeff Wicks (Tafelberg)

The Deal: Inside the Talks that Shaped South Africa’s Future — Mandy Wiener (Pan Macmillan)

The Chaos Precinct: Johannesburg as a Port City — Tanya Zack (Jacana Media)

Here is the full fiction longlist

6h00 Somewhere and Many Hours Later Somewhere Else — Barbara Adair (Hands-On Books)

Salt Water Pool Boy — Peter-Adrian Altini (Karavan Press)

The Nicotine Gospel — Sven Axelrad (Umuzi)

Ice Shock — Elleke Boehmer (Karavan Press)

Diplomatic Ties — Mpho Boshego (Pan Macmillan)

Not Another Samoosa Run! — Nadia Cassim (Kwela Books)

Hell of a Country — David Cornwell (Kwela Books)

An Act of Murder — Tom Eaton (Penguin)

The Whale’s Last Song — Joanne Fedler (Modjaji Books)

Song of the Slave Girl — Ashraf Kagee (Jacana Media)

The Fragile Mental Health of Strong Women — Michelle Kekana (Jacana Media)

Out of the Dead Lands — Conrad Kemp (Mirari Press)

Bosadi — Kopano Matlwa (Jacana Media)

Canary — Onze Mazibuko (Penguin)

Buried in the Chest — Lindani Mbunyuza-Memani (Jacana Media)

Book People — Paige Nick (Pan Macmillan)

The Immortalites — Claire Robertson (Umuzi)

All the Saints — Wesley Roodt (Jacana Media)

Unsolicited — Andrea Shaw (Jacana Media)

The Fourth Boy — Andrew Robert Wilson (Karavan Press)

The shortlists and winners will be announced in the coming months. Full details are available at the Sunday Times Books section here.