Ugandan novelist Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi has been long listed for the 2014 Etisalat Prize for Literature for her debut novel Kintu making her the only East African author in a race that South Africans dominate with four out of the nine nominees.

The prize that the Nigerian telecom giant bankrolls is in its second edition. At $23,500, it offers a better purse than the more well-known $15,650 Caine Prize, which it aims to match in prestige as Africa’s most sought after literary prize for the continent’s fiction.

The list, according to Sarah Ladipo Manyika, who will chair the judges, reflects the continent’s great diversity not just by nationality but also the content of their work.

“We are happy with our decision and cannot wait to reread the nine books to prepare for the upcoming retreat where we will determine the shortlist,” said Manyika in a statement.

Makumbi, who lives in the UK, says she is excited by the selection but will not consider the prize hers yet, because she is lined up against a “formidable list.”

“Are you sure this is true?” Makumbi asked two of her online friends who knew about the nomination before her.

“It was a surprise,” she responded to another’s congratulatory message.

Kwani, a Kenyan publishing house, published Kintu in June, after the novel won the Trust’s manuscript prize last year. Jamal Mahjoub, who chaired the judges for that prize, described the book as an “ambitious modern epic that takes a family saga and the history of Uganda, fusing the urgency of the present with the timelessness of myth.”

READ: Short Story: The Kintu saga

Shortly after Kintu’s publication, Makumbi scooped both the regional (Africa) and overall prizes in the Commonwealth Short Story competition for her story, Let’s Tell This Story Properly. Unrelated to Kintu, it touches on the themes of death, bereavement, complex cultural mores, which she explores at length in her award winning novel.

“I cannot speak for any other authors but, if I had not won the Kwani manuscript prize Kintu would still be unpublished. That is a fact. If I had not won the Commonwealth prize we wouldn’t be holding this conversation,” she said in an online interview.

READ: Jennifer Makumbi’s tale of Kintu

From a few copies that were shipped into Uganda to aid the launch, Kintu has been received with huge interest judging by continuous online demands for copies and multiple restocking by the publishers. Makumbi says she is both pleasantly surprised and relieved by the response the book has inspired.

“It was critical to me that Ugandans pay attention to the book. I think the attraction has been partly the historiography, partly the critical aspect of ourselves. But it is hard to tell. Perhaps it’s the language,” she said.

READ: Oral tradition pays off for Jennifer Makumbi

The 442-page novel is intimidating at first sight, laid back in its opening in a seemingly unserious, lazy sort of way of dealing with a serious matter, enticing past the first page beyond which the reader struggles to put it down.

As one such reader noted on Goodreads, a books website, “Kintu is a book I thought I would not finish, but when I held it I could not put it down; when the story starts off and you don’t want to put it down! I like the way the author mixes street-speak lingua with mainstream writing, it’s one of those books... Well go ahead read it!”