Twelfth Caine Prize shortlist announced
The shortlist for the 2011 Caine Prize for African Writing has been announced today (Monday 9 May). The Caine Prize, widely known as the ‘African Booker’ and regarded as Africa’s leading literary award, is now in its twelfth year. The chair of judges, the award-winning Libyan novelist Hisham Matar, said “choosing a shortlist out of nearly 130 entries was not an easy task – one made more difficult and yet more enjoyable by the varied tastes of the judges – but we have arrived at a list of five stories that excel in quality and ambition. Together they represent a portrait of today’s African short story: its wit and intelligence, its concerns and preoccupations.” Selected from 126 entries from 17 African countries, the shortlist is once again a reflection of the Caine Prize’s pan-African reach. The winner of the £10,000 prize is to be announced at a celebratory dinner at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, on Monday 11 July.
The 2011 shortlist comprises:
NoViolet Bulawayo (Zimbabwe) ‘Hitting Budapest’ from ‘The Boston Review’ Vol 35, no. 6 – Nov/Dec 2010
Beatrice Lamwaka (Uganda) ‘Butterfly dreams’ from ‘Butterfly Dreams and Other New Short Stories from Uganda’ published by Critical, Cultural and Communications Press, Nottingham, 2010
Tim Keegan (South Africa) ‘What Molly Knew’ from ‘Bad Company’ published by Pan Macmillan SA, 2008
Lauri Kubuitsile (Botswana) ‘In the spirit of McPhineas Lata’ from ‘The Bed Book of Short Stories’ published by Modjaji Books, SA, 2010
David Medalie (South Africa) ‘The Mistress’s Dog’ from ‘The Mistress’s Dog: Short stories 1996-2010’ published by Picador Africa, 2010
As always the stories are available to read online on their website.
Joining Hisham on the judging panel this year are Granta deputy editor Ellah Allfrey, publisher, film and travel writer Vicky Unwin, Georgetown University Professor and poet David Gewanter and the award-winning author Aminatta Forna. Once again the winner of the £10,000 Caine Prize will be given the opportunity of taking up a month’s residence at Georgetown University, Washington DC, as a ‘Caine Prize/Georgetown University Writer-in-Residence.’ The award will cover all travel and living expenses.
Last year the Caine Prize was won by Sierra Leonean writer Olufemi Terry. As the then Chair of judges, Fiammetta Rocco, said at the time, the story was “ambitious, brave and hugely imaginative. Olufemi Terry’s ‘Stickfighting Days’ presents a heroic culture that is Homeric in its scale and conception. The execution of this story is so tight and the presentation so cinematic, it confirms Olufemi Terry as a talent with an enormous future.”
Previous winners include Uganda’s Monica Arac de Nyeko, for ‘Jambula Tree’ from ‘African Love Stories’,
Ayebia Clarke Publishing, 2006, and Binyavanga Wainaina, from Kenya, who founded the well-known literary magazine, Kwani?, to publish work by new Kenyan writers.
This year the shortlisted writers will be reading from their work at the Royal Over-Seas League on Friday, 8 July at 7pm and at the London Literature Festival at the Southbank Centre, on Sunday, 10 July at 7pm.
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The Caine Prize, awarded annually for African creative writing, is named after the late Sir Michael Caine, former Chairman of Booker plc and Chairman of the Booker Prize management committee for nearly 25 years. The Prize is awarded for a short story by an African writer published in English (indicative length 3,000 to 10,000 words). An “African writer” will normally be taken to mean someone who was born in Africa, or who is a national of an African country, or whose parents are African, and whose work has reflected that cultural background.
The African winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Wole Soyinka, Nadine Gordimer and J M Coetzee, are Patrons of The Caine Prize, as is Chinua Achebe. Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne is President of the Council and Jonathan Taylor is the Chairman.
The stories written at Caine Prize workshops are published annually alongside the Prize’s shortlisted stories by New Internationalist (UK), Jacana Media (South Africa) and Cassava Republic (Nigeria). Books are available direct from the publishers or from the Africa Book Centre, African Books Collective or Amazon.
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