Mandy Wiener Shortlisted for the 2012 Alan Paton Award for Killing Kebble

by Thando on May 15th, 2012

Pan Macmillan is delighted to announce that on Saturday night Mandy Wiener’s bestselling book, Killing Kebble: An Underworld Exposed, was shortlisted for the 2012 Sunday Times Alan Paton Award.

Mandy Wiener is an Eyewitness News journalist. She joins a prestigious group of six South African authors shortlisted for the non-fiction Alan Paton Award. To date over 66 000 copies of her debut release have been sold across all editions.

In September 2005 Brett Kebble, a prominent South African mining magnate, was killed on a quiet suburban street in Johannesburg in an apparent ‘assisted suicide’. The top-level investigation that followed was a tipping point for democratic South Africa. It exposed the corrupt relationship between South Africa’s Chief of Police, Interpol President Jackie Selebi and his friend, Glenn Agliotti, and revealed an underworld dominated by drug lords, steroid-fuelled bouncers, hit men for hire, an international smuggling syndicate, a dubious security unit moonlighting for the police and sinister self-serving sleuths abusing state agencies.

Indemnified by an agreement struck with the state, Mikey Schultz, Nigel McGurk and Fiazal ‘Kappie’ Smith come clean to Mandy Wiener in exclusive interviews about the chilling events leading up to the night Kebble was shot dead and the life paths of the ‘bungling assassins’. Glenn Agliotti, the man once accused of orchestrating the hit, has also provided Wiener with unlimited access to his story, as have other characters whose versions of the events are previously untold.

‘To be shortlisted as a first-time author for such a prestigious award is a tremendous accolade and one that I am extremely grateful for – particularly in a year that features such strong titles and esteemed writers. I’ve been so overwhelmed by the success of Killing Kebble and a shortlisting is a fabulous crowning for what has already been a pretty wild ride since it was released.’ – Mandy Wiener

‘Pan Macmillan is delighted to see Killing Kebble on the shortlist for the Sunday Times Alan Paton Award. It is welcome recognition for an extraordinary debut that was South Africa’s top-selling non-fiction title in 2011.’ – Andrea Nattrass, Publisher at Pan Macmillan South Africa

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