At the 2019 Media24 Books Literary Prizes bestowed in Cape Town on 13 June – awards which recognise the best work published during the previous year by Media24 book publishers – Gabeba scooped the Elisabeth Eybers Prize for Afrikaans and English poetry for The History of Intimacy, published by Kwela Books.
The judges were impressed by the controlled lyricism and calm maturity of the poems in the collection: “The work depicts the transitions of Baderoon’s world, herself a figure of transit, and does this in a grammar that relies mainly on the strength of its images. It is a book of technical ease and linguistic subtlety of a high order.”
The English Department again had the pleasure of congratulating Prof Gabeba Baderoon on the shortlisting of this poetry collection The History of Intimacy for the 2019 University of Johannesburg Prize, in the Main Prize Category. Read the report by the Johannesburg Review of Books.