12th Caine Prize Shortlist

I know this has been long in coming... The shortlist for the 2011 Caine Prize for African Writing was been announced on 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 our website. Read more here.

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