The Cameroonian writer won the prize for her first novel “The Aquatics”, described as “the inner portrait of a woman who reveals herself to herself and a profound reflection on the power games in contemporary African society”.
The winner of this first edition of the Pan-African Prize for Literature was announced on Monday, January 24 in Kinshasa, at the DRC National Museum, on the occasion of the World Day of African and Afro-descendant Culture and in the presence of the Congolese President, Felix Tshisekedi, who is also the current President of the African Union.
Osvalde Lewat will receive his prize, endowed with 30,000 U.S. dollars, on the sidelines of the 35th General Assembly of the Conference of Heads of State and Government of the African Union (AU), scheduled for February 5 to 6 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
Initiated by the Congolese presidency of the AU, the Pan-African Grand Prize for Literature annually rewards the best literary work of fiction (novel, story, short story, poetry, drama) “written in French or English, two of the working languages of the African Union.
A plot that combines two quests
In “Les Aquatiques”, it’s explain, the plot cleverly mixes two quests (a funeral and a death). Osvalde Lewat slips into the shoes of the wife of the prefect of the capital of an imaginary country, Zambuena. With Katmé, her heroine, she plunges into the petty arrangements of an elite that thinks only of itself, and the unfailing friendship that binds her to a high school friend, Samy, an artist. “The author’s audacity is palpable. The characters (Katmé, Samuel, Kizito, the children, Alexander, etc.) remain convincing, embodied, full, while keeping their share of mystery, “says the website dedicated to the Pan-African Grand Prize for Literature.
“Twenty years after the death of her mother, Katmé Abbia, a teacher, learns that the grave must be moved. Her husband, Tashun, the capital’s prefect, sees this new burial as a providential opportunity to repair the mistakes of the past and, above all, to give a boost to his political career. When Samy, a tormented artist and Katmé’s lifelong friend and brother, is arrested and thrown into prison, her husband’s political ambitions collide with her life and she is faced with a terrible choice”.
Documentary filmmaker, photographer and writer
Osvalde Lewat was born in Gaoura, Cameroon. She began sharing her creative universe through documentary films and photographs. Author of several award-winning works, she published in August 2021, Les Aquatiques, her first novel.
Osvalde Lewat is a graduate of Sciences-Po Paris and has completed image training courses at Femis in Paris and at the Institut National de l’Image et du Son (INIS) in Montreal. Her photographs have been exhibited in Africa, Europe and America.
Her films, broadcast by more than seventy television stations around the world, have traveled to five continents and received several international awards including the Tanit d’or at Carthage, the Etalon de Bronze at Fespaco, the Star of the Scam, and the prestigious Peabody award in the United States. She has given training courses in documentary writing in Africa and Europe and master classes in American universities.
In addition to her artistic activity, Osvalde Lewat, who has lived in various countries around the world (France, Canada, Comoros, Congo-Kinshasa, Burkina Faso…), is the initiator of several socio-cultural projects in Africa.
