PATCHWORK

216pp., paperback, Johannesburg, 2011

Winner of the 2010 Penguin Prize for African Writing (fiction).

A novel set in Lusaka, Zambia, in 1978, about a young girl who's mother is an secret alcoholic

Zambian writer Ellen Banda-Aaku was born in Woking, Surrey, in 1965 and has lived and worked in Zambia, Ghana, South Africa and the UK. In 2004 she won the Macmillan Writers' Prize for Africa for her children's book Wandi's Little Voice, a book for children. In 2007, her short story, Sozi's Box, was the overall winner of the Commonwealth Short Story Competition.