Last night in England, South African Henrietta Rose-Innes was announced as this year’s Caine Prize winner for her story ‘Poison’ in the anthology from last year’s SA/PEN contest. Henrietta studied under Nobel Prize winner JM Coetzee. She has two published novels, Shark’s Egg and The Rocket Alphabet. It’s been difficult lately to find any prestigious contest without her name among the winners. Watch out world- is South Africa about to give birth to yet another Nobel Prize winner??
CONGRATULATIONS HENRIETTA!!!
Last year’s winner was Monica Arac de Nyeko for her story ‘Jambula Tre’. Not sure why everyone (including the BBC) is so obsessed with the fact that the story is about lesbianism. I understand from interviews I’ve read that she’s not that keen on the obsession people have developed about the story. (Forget I mentioned it). The anthologies for the Caine are no longer being published by South African publisher Jacana. They’ve been taken over by UK based New Internationalist.
NOTE: From the comments to this entry, I've learned that Jacana is still publishing the Caine anthologies, but in collaboration with New Internationalist.
Hi Lauri
ReplyDeleteJust to correct the statement that Jacana are no longer publishing the Caine Prize winners: Jacana are the publishers, and instead of us shipping books to the UK and in order to make the book available in the UK at the time of the prize, New Internationalist publish in the UK and we, Jacana publish in SA.
So we remain the publishers, but it is also published by New Internationalist.
Thanks for that correction. I had been told something else.
ReplyDelete