Cape Town’s Mary Watson is this year’s winner of the Caine Prize for African writing.
Watson’s short story Jungfrau (Young Woman), from her 2004 collection Moss (Kwela Books), won her one of Africa’s premier literary awards, announced at a gala dinner at the Bodleian Library in Oxford on Monday. Watson took home $15 000 and the lustre of being the seventh winner of what has come to be dubbed the African Booker.
The Caine is awarded to a short story published in English by an African writer whose work is rooted in African sensibilities. It was established in 2000 and has grown exponentially, with the 2006 entries being the largest yet: 110 from 21 countries in Africa.
Set in post-apartheid South Africa, Watson’s story of fractured social relationships is told from the perspective of a young girl. The Caine judges hailed it as “powerfully written”.
In a radio interview, Watson told the BBC World Service that her ambition is to be a full time writer and that winning the award is a significant step towards making that viable.
Fans of Watson’s short stories can look forward to a lengthier prose excursion from the writer, who is working on her first novel.
South Africa had the distinction of representing two-fifths of the Caine shortlist: former newspaper columnist Darrel Bristow-Bovey was nominated for A Jo’burg Story, published in African Compass. The other shortlisted writers were Moroccan-born Laila Lalami; Sefi Atta of Nigeria; and Kenya’s Muthoni Garland.
Africa’s Nobel literature prize winners, Wole Soyinka, Nadine Gordimer, Naguib Mahfouz and JM Coetzee — are patrons of the Caine Prize.