10 Years of the Caine Prize for African Writing: Plus Coetzee, Gordimer, Achebe, Okri

by The Caine Prize for African Writing (Editor)

Overview

Celebrating ten years of the leading literary prize for African fiction (dubbed "The African Booker"), 10 Years of the Caine Prize brings together the ten winning stories along with a story each from the four African winners of the Booker Prize: Chinua Achebe, J.M. Coetzee, Nadine Gordimer, and Ben Okri.

The ten winners:

Leila Aboulela for The Museum
Helon Habila for Love Poems
Binyavanga Wainaina for Discovering Home
Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor for Weight of Whispers
Brian Chikwava for Seventh Street Alchemy
S.A. Afolabi for Monday Morning
Mary Watson for Jungfrau
Monica Arac de Nyeko for Jambula Tree
Henrietta Rose-Innes for Poison

(The tenth winner is to be announced and published in the New Internationalist in July 2009.)

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781906523800
Publisher:	New Internationalist
Publication date:	09/01/2009
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	228
File size:	499 KB

Editorial Reviews

Starred Review.

As exhibited in this collection, the Caine Prize, founded in 1999 in honor of the late Sir Michael Caine's work to popularize African writing in English, has spotlighted some exceptional writing; each prize-winning short story included here (the Caine is also known as the African Booker; as such, African winners of the Booker prize also appear) examines and explodes stereotypes about Africa and its literature. Characters reveal dignity and doubt in extraordinary situations, including a grandmother who abandons her frail husband in order to carry her grandchildren to safety in Nadine Gordimer's powerful "The Ultimate Safari." J. M. Coetzee's "Nietverloren" examines the changing face of Africa through the demise of a small family farm. Binyavanga Wainaina's "Discovering Home," meanwhile, contrasts a young man's year at home in Kenya after several years of cosmopolitan Cape Town life. Despite a rich diversity of style and subject matter, each story, as described in Ben Okri's introduction, "reveals what hides in people," offering intimate glimpses into an array of African lives. Anyone who enjoys realistic literary fiction will treasure this collection.
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