Bryony Rheam's short story collection Whatever Happened to Rick Astley? has been nominated for the Outstanding Fiction Book award for Zimbabwe's National Arts Merit Awards (NAMAs).
In its 22nd edition, the awards celebrate the achievements of artists across a wide array of categories, from music, literature and visual arts to film, theatre, dance, and journalism. The winners will be announced at the awards ceremony, to be held in Zimbabwe's second city of Bulawayo on 24 February. The writers of the other titles nominated in the Outstanding Fiction Book category are, coincidently, also from Bulawayo: Violette Kee-Tui, for Magic and Masala, and Zibusiso Mabonisa, for UKhethiwe. Congratulations to Bryony Rheam and to the other nominated authors.
'Whatever Happened to Rick Astley?, Bryony Rheam’s wonderful collection of short stories, deals with loss—loss of identity, loss of memory, loss of country, loss of someone you love. While the theme seems to be a heavy one, the stories capture the beauty and the magic of the ordinary. There is nostalgia here for what once was, but there is also a lot of hope for what could be. Anything that can give us hope in today’s day and age is truly amazing, and that is what this collection is.' – Siphiwe Ndlovu, The Theory of Flight
Whatever Happened to Rick Astley?, co-published with Zimbabwean publisher amaBooks, is available to order here.
