Category: caine prize

HOW TO WIN THE CAINE PRIZE

We had an interesting conversation in the comments on my post about the Caine Prize:

1) Why do so many successful African writers live outside Africa? (are they African writers or ‘African’ writers?)
2) Does the Caine, and the literary world generally, favour stories from Africa about poverty?

I’ve nothing further on 1), but I did a little research on 2), and found that every winning story for the last three years was about poor people, and in particular about poor children. 2011’s winning text is linked to in my previous post, but here’s 2010’s, Stickfighting by Olufemi Terry, and 2009’s, Waiting by EC Osondu

I’ve struggled to get much detail about what the stories from previous years were about, but I think this is certainly an interesting tendency for at least the last three.

I should be very clear here that I don’t mean to bash on the Caine prize. I’m really grateful and glad it exists as a platform for African writers. I’m just wondering what this tendency mean – if stories of the poor are perceived as being the ‘real’ Africa; or if it’s simply chance; or if perhaps the majority of stories submitted were in fact about poverty anyway (which would interesting in itself) . . . .

Zimbabwean Wins The Caine Prize

As a Zimbabwean literary blog, it is appalling that we have missed out on a major piece of Zimbabwean literary news . . . a Zimbabwean has won the Caine!

The Caine is often described as Africa’s Booker, and is awarded annually to the best short story from the continent. It was last won by a Zimbabwean in 2004 (Brian Chikwava, who went on to write HARARE NORTH.) This makes two Zimbabwean wins in eight years, not bad for a country holding just 10 million of African’s 1 billion people. In short: ha! We may not have an economy but we still have writers! Who needs a stupid economy anyway.

Full text of the story is here.

As a side point, I see NoViolet Bulowayo has lived in the US since 1999, but says she longs to be writing back in Africa. I think it is interesting how many writers defined as African live in the US and UK. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is another one. I suspect this is primarily a question of economics, but I do wonder what effect – if any – this is having on the literature of the continent . . .