Meshack Asare

[4] The Brassman's Secret was his representative text read by the nominating jury, and the award honors his entire body of work.

His mother Agatha Adoma Afram was a trader and his father Joseph K. Asare was an accountant.

After a period of ten years during which he did not publish any work, Asare returned in 1981 with a new book, The Brassman's Secret, which was translated into many languages, and won the Noma Award in 1982 as the best book published in Africa in the preceding year.

In 1984, Asare's Cat in Search of a Friend won the Austrian National Prize (1985) and a BIB Golden Plaque at the Bratislava Biennale (1995).

His book Sosu's Call was the winner of the 1999 UNESCO First Prize for Children's and Young People's Literature in the Service of Tolerance.