The shortlist for the 2011 Caine Prize for African Writing has been announced today (Monday 9 May).\u00a0\u00a0 The Caine Prize, widely known as the \u2018African Booker\u2019 and regarded as Africa\u2019s leading literary award, is\u00a0 now in its twelfth year. The chair of judges, the award-winning Libyan novelist Hisham Matar, said\u00a0 “choosing a shortlist out of nearly 130 entries was not an easy task \u2013 one made more difficult and yet\u00a0 more enjoyable by the varied tastes of the judges \u2013 but we have arrived at a list of five stories that excel\u00a0 in quality and ambition. Together they represent a portrait of today\u2019s African short story: its wit and\u00a0 intelligence, its concerns and preoccupations.\u201d\u00a0 Selected from 126 entries from 17 African countries, the shortlist is once again a reflection of the Caine\u00a0 Prize\u2019s pan-African reach. The winner of the \u00a310,000 prize is to be announced at a celebratory dinner at\u00a0 the Bodleian Library, Oxford, on Monday 11 July.<\/p>\n
The 2011 shortlist comprises:<\/p>\n
NoViolet Bulawayo (Zimbabwe) \u2018Hitting Budapest\u2019 from \u2018The Boston Review\u2019 Vol 35, no. 6 – Nov\/Dec 2010<\/p>\n
Beatrice Lamwaka (Uganda) \u2018Butterfly dreams\u2019 from \u2018Butterfly Dreams and Other New Short\u00a0 Stories from Uganda\u2019 published by Critical, Cultural and Communications Press, Nottingham, 2010<\/p>\n
Tim Keegan (South Africa) \u2018What Molly Knew\u2019 from \u2018Bad Company\u2019 published by Pan Macmillan SA, 2008<\/p>\n
Lauri Kubuitsile (Botswana) \u2018In the spirit of McPhineas Lata\u2019 from \u2018The Bed Book of Short Stories\u2019 published by Modjaji Books, SA, 2010<\/p>\n
David Medalie (South Africa) \u2018The Mistress\u2019s Dog\u2019 from \u2018The Mistress\u2019s Dog: Short stories 1996-2010\u2019 published by Picador Africa, 2010<\/p>\n
As always the stories are available to read online on their website.<\/p>\n
Joining Hisham on the judging panel this year are Granta deputy editor Ellah Allfrey, publisher, film\u00a0 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 \u00a310,000 Caine Prize will be given the opportunity of taking up a month\u2019s residence at Georgetown University, Washington DC, as a \u2018Caine Prize\/Georgetown University Writer-in-Residence.\u2019 The award will cover all travel and living expenses.<\/p>\n
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 \u201cambitious, brave and hugely imaginative. Olufemi Terry\u2019s \u2018Stickfighting Days\u2019 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
Previous winners include Uganda\u2019s Monica Arac de Nyeko, for \u2018Jambula Tree\u2019 from \u2018African Love Stories\u2019,<\/p>\n
Ayebia Clarke Publishing, 2006, and Binyavanga Wainaina, from Kenya, who founded the well-known\u00a0 literary magazine, Kwani?, to publish work by new Kenyan writers.<\/p>\n
This year the shortlisted writers will be reading from their work at the Royal Over-Seas League on Friday,\u00a0 8 July at 7pm and at the London Literature Festival at the Southbank Centre, on Sunday, 10 July at 7pm.<\/p>\n
– 0 – 0 – 0 – 0 –<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n 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 \u201cAfrican writer\u201d 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.<\/p>\n 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\u00a0 Winterbourne is President of the Council and Jonathan Taylor is the Chairman.<\/p>\n The stories written at Caine Prize workshops are published annually alongside the Prize\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n Stay with Sierra Express Media, for your trusted place in news!<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n The shortlist for the 2011 Caine Prize for African Writing has been announced today (Monday 9 May).\u00a0\u00a0 The Caine Prize, widely known as the \u2018African […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":75801,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[751,745,1],"tags":[8248,5201],"class_list":["post-23607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-global-news","category-life-and-entertainment","category-uncategorized","tag-caine-prize-2011","tag-caine-prize-for-african-writers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23607"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23607\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/75801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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