AiW Note: It’s that time of the year again and AiW’s annual review series of what is now the AKO Caine Prize for African Writing shortlist is back! Every day this week, we are publishing Guest reviews of the five… Read More ›
Blogging the Caine Prize
Review Caine 2021: [Mis]understanding the Game – Meron Hadero’s ‘The Street Sweep’
AiW Note: It’s that time of the year again and AiW’s annual review series of what is now the AKO Caine Prize for African Writing shortlist is back! Every day this week, we are publishing Guest reviews of the five… Read More ›
Caine Prize 2019 Shortlist: A Review of Tochukwo Okafor’s “All Our Lives”
AiW Note: The Caine Prize has recently removed Tochukwu Emmanuel Okafor’s “All Our Lives” from the 2019 shortlist, following a decision that there had been “failure to attribute an original source.” Short Story Day Africa, who awarded its 2017 Prize… Read More ›
Caine Prize 2018 Shortlist: A Review of Nonyelum Ekwempu’s “American Dream”
AiW note: This past week, we have featured reviews of each of the stories shortlisted for the 2018 Caine Prize for African Writing, ahead of the announcement of the winner this evening, 2 July, at SOAS, University of London. This,… Read More ›
Caine Prize 2018 Shortlist: A Review of Stacy Hardy’s “Involution”
AiW Guest: Katarzyna Kubin This review of Stacy Hardy’s “Involution” by our regular Guest contributor, Katarzyna Kubin, is the penultimate of our series of the stories shortlisted for the 2018 Caine Prize for African Writing, ahead of the announcement… Read More ›
Caine Prize 2018 Shortlist: A Review of Olufunke Oludimu’s “The Armed Letter Writers”
AiW Guest: Divisha Chummun AiW’s annual Caine Prize review series is back. We’ve been talking about prize culture for a long time at Africa in Words; Kate Wallis started off this series in 2013. In the coming days we are… Read More ›
Caine Prize 2018 Shortlist: A Review of Makena Onjerika’s “Fanta Blackcurrant”
AiW Guest: Beverly Akoyo Ochieng’ AiW’s annual Caine Prize review series is back. We’ve been talking about prize culture for a long time at Africa in Words; Kate Wallis started off this series in 2013. In the coming days we are… Read More ›
Caine Prize 2018 Shortlist: A Review of Wole Talabi’s “Wednesday’s Story”
AiW Guest: Sana Goyal AiW’s annual Caine Prize review series is back. We’ve been talking about prize culture for a long time at Africa in Words; Kate Wallis started off this series in 2013. In the coming days we are… Read More ›
Africa in Words at Africa Writes 2018
In among the generosity and wealth of Africa Writes’ offerings this year – new and fresh events, workshops, panels and conversations – see our Event Preview here and the Africa Writes programme with further details on their website, with advance… Read More ›
2016 Caine Prize Shortlist: Review of Bongani Kona’s “At Your Requiem.”
It’s Caine Prize season again! Before the judges’ announcement on 4th July, we’re taking a look at each of the shortlisted stories. This week, Beverley Nambozo Nsengiyunva reviews Bongani Kona’s “At Your Requiem.” AiW Guest: Beverley Nambozo Nsengiyunva Bongani Kona’s story, “At Your Requiem,” is one of the most… Read More ›
Caine Prize 2016: “Memories We Lost”—The Text, Its Readers and the World, a review by Pede Hollist
AiW Guest Pede Hollist The biography at the end of “Memories We Lost” quotes South African writer, filmmaker, and photographer Lidudumalingani as saying, “I am fascinated by mental illnesses, having seen my own extended relatives deal with it.” He also… Read More ›
Broken Men Who Never Heal: A Review of Bongani Kona’s “At Your Requiem”
AiW Guest: Iquo DianaAbasi “I rewind time to conjure you back to life.” The above words on the opening page strike a note of foreboding and thus set the tone and pace for the story. Indeed the whole tale rests on this conjuring back to life through… Read More ›
Review: Lusaka Punk and Other Stories – the Caine Prize Anthology 2015
AiW Guest: Madhu Krishnan In the just sixteen years that it has existed, the Caine Prize for African Writing has made an indelible mark, if not on African literature itself, then certainly on the critical discourses which surround it. With… Read More ›
Q&A: Pede Hollist
Posted in the run up to our review of the Caine Prize 2015 anthology Lusaka Punk and Other Stories, as part of a follow up series to our 2015 Blogging the Caine Prize – open to the ongoing public conversation the prize, and… Read More ›
Q&A: Namwali Serpell
Shortly before Namwali Serpell became the sixteenth winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing, I had the chance to ask her a couple of questions about reading her winning story ‘The Sack’ and its many modes of uncertainty. This Q&A forms part… Read More ›
Q&A: Masande Ntshanga
Posted in the run up to our review of the Caine Prize 2015 anthology Lusaka Punk and Other Stories, as part of a follow up series to our 2015 Blogging the Caine Prize – open to the ongoing public conversation the prize, and… Read More ›
Q&A: F.T. Kola
Recognising the critical debate that has surrounded it this year and in the past, AiW has followed the 2015 Caine Prize for African Writing by Blogging the Caine Prize again this year. Acknowledging the wider conversation, new and regular authors have shared… Read More ›
Acts of mutiny: the Caine Prize and ‘African Literature’
By AiW Guest Ranka Primorac. In London, a three-day literary festival called Africa Writes took place recently at the British Library (BL). The festival is now in its fourth year, it hosts an ever-widening stream of writers, readers and publishers,… Read More ›
Blogging the Caine Prize: Elnathan John’s ‘Flying’
AiW Guest Madhu Krishnan Elnathan John’s ‘Flying’ opens with a dream and ends with a limping chicken. If that sentence sounds incongruous, it, like the story itself, is deliberately so. Throughout its course, ‘Flying’ – at only just over 4200… Read More ›
Blogging the Caine Prize: Segun Afolabi’s ‘The Folded Leaf’
AiW Guest: John Uwa In reviewing Segun Afolabi’s ‘The Folded Leaf’, a short story shortlisted for Caine Prize 2015, one must resist the temptation to mounting up praises on the text. It is certainly a well-articulated and thematically focused text; and… Read More ›