COMMONWEALTH WRITER'S PRIZE FOR  BEST FIRST BOOK 1989-2003

Since 1987 the Commonwealth Writers Prize has been awarded by the Commonwealth Foundation to "reward and encourage the upsurge of new Commonwealth fiction, and to ensure that works of merit reach a wider audience outside their own country." Determinedly cosmopolitan, it holds each final judging and award ceremony in a different one of the 53 Commonwealth countries. Its shortlisting procedure is designed to ensure this cosmopolitanism. For the purposes of the award the Commonwealth is divided into four regions, Africa, the Caribbean and Canada, Eurasia (which includes the United Kingdom), and Southeast Asia and the South Pacific. In each region a best book and a best first book are chosen: these comprise the overall shortlist. The Prize for Best First Book was first awarded in 1989