Oyinkan Braithwaite’s debut novel My Sister, the Serial Killer was announced winner in the “Best First Novel” category at the Anthony Awards 2019 on November 2, 2019.
The Anthony Award is named for the late Anthony Boucher, a well-known California writer, and critic who wrote for the San Francisco Chronicle and the New York Times Book Review who also helped found Mystery Writers of America. They are given in the categories of Best Novel, Best First Novel, Best Paperback Original, Best Short Story, Best Critical / Non-fiction Work, and Special Service Award.
First presented in 1986 at the Bouchercon World Mystery Convention, the Anthony Awards are among the most prestigious and coveted literary awards in the mystery world. Previous winners include Agatha Christie, J.K. Rowling, and Stieg Larsson.
The shortlists for this year’s awards announced on Wednesday, May 15 featured Oyinkan Braithwaite’s debut novel My Sister, the Serial Killer. The winner was announced at the convention on November 2 with the novel by the Nigerian writer beating out four other entries and scooping the award in its category.
My Sister, the Serial Killer is described as a short, darkly funny, hand grenade of a novel about a Nigerian woman whose younger sister has a very inconvenient habit of killing her boyfriends. Since the novel was published in 2018 by Doubleday it has won the LA Times Prize, been longlisted for the Booker Prize, and shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. The Nigerian rights for the novel are held by Narrative Landscape.
