The Caine Prize for African Writing is an annual

literary award A literary award or literary prize is an award presented in recognition of a particularly lauded Literature, literary piece or body of work. It is normally presented to an author. Organizations Most literary awards come with a corresponding award c ...

for the best

short story A short story is a piece of prose fiction. It can typically be read in a single sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. The short story is one of the old ...

by an African writer, whether in

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent after Asia. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 20% of Earth's land area and 6% of its total surfac ...

or elsewhere, published in the

English language English is a West Germanic language that developed in early medieval England and has since become a English as a lingua franca, global lingua franca. The namesake of the language is the Angles (tribe), Angles, one of the Germanic peoples th ...

. Founded in the United Kingdom in 2000, the £10,000 prize was named in memory of businessman and philanthropist Sir Michael Harris Caine, former chairman of

Booker Group Booker Group Limited is a British wholesale distributor, and subsidiary of Tesco plc. In January 2017, it was announced that the British multinational supermarket retailer Tesco had agreed to purchase the company for £3.7 billion. It was con ...

and of the

Booker Prize The Booker Prize, formerly the Booker Prize for Fiction (1969–2001) and the Man Booker Prize (2002–2019), is a prestigious literary award conferred each year for the best single work of sustained fiction written in the English language, wh ...

management committee. The Caine Prize is sometimes referred to as the "African Booker". The Chair of the Board is Ellah Wakatama, appointed in 2019. Between 2020 and 2022 it was styled as the ''AKO Caine Prize for African Writing'' due to a three-year grant from Nicolai Tangen's AKO Foundation.

History and background

The Caine Prize is a registered charity with the aim of bringing African writing to a wider audience through an annual literary award. It is named after businessman and philanthropist Sir Michael Caine (1927–1999), former Chairman of Booker plc, who also chaired the " Africa95" arts festival and the Booker Prize management committee for almost 25 years. After his death, friends and colleagues established the prize to be awarded annually in his memory. The prize was first awarded in

2000 2000 was designated as the International Year for the Culture of Peace and the World Mathematics, Mathematical Year. Popular culture holds the year 2000 as the first year of the 21st century and the 3rd millennium, because of a tende ...

, to the

Sudan Sudan, officially the Republic of the Sudan, is a country in Northeast Africa. It borders the Central African Republic to the southwest, Chad to the west, Libya to the northwest, Egypt to the north, the Red Sea to the east, Eritrea and Ethiopi ...

ese writer Leila Aboulela for her short story "The Museum", at the

Zimbabwe International Book Fair The Zimbabwe International Book Fair was held for the first time in 1983 in Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe. It was founded by David Martin (late), Phylis Johnson and Charles Mungoshi (late). Until the opening of the Cape Town Book Fair in 2006 ...

Harare Harare ( ), formerly Salisbury, is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Zimbabwe. The city proper has an area of , a population of 1,849,600 as of the 2022 Zimbabwe census, 2022 census and an estimated 2,487,209 people in its metrop ...

. In its first year the Caine Prize attracted entries from 20 African countries. Historically, the winner was announced at a dinner in July, at an event formerly held in

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but more recently at

SOAS The School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS University of London; ) is a public research university in London, England, and a member institution of the federal University of London. Founded in 1916, SOAS is located in the Bloomsbury area ...

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, to which the shortlisted candidates were all invited. This formed part of a week of activities for the candidates, including readings, book signings and press opportunities. In 2024, the Caine Prize declared that it would "re-centre" itself on the African continent, with a planned year-long celebration of the prize’'s 25th anniversary in 2025. Proposed events include readings and discussions involving the shortlisted writers and past winners, and tributes to writers such as the late Charles Mungoshi (Zimbabwe), who was shortlisted in 2000, and the late Binyavanga Wainaina (Kenya), who won the award in 2002. The Caine Prize also arranges writers' workshops that are held in a different African country each year.

Supporters

Among supporters of the prize are friends of Sir Michael Caine in the UK, United States and

, the Oppenheimer Memorial Trust, the Zochonis Foundation, the Marit & Hans Rausing Foundation, the Gatsby Charitable Foundation, the

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, the Esmee Fairbairn Charitable Trust, the David Alliance Family Foundation, the Cairns Charitable Trust, the Botwinick-Wolfensohn Family Foundation, the Sunrise Foundation, the Von Clemm Charitable Trust, the

Royal Over-Seas League The Royal Over-Seas League (ROSL) is a not-for-profit institution founded in 1910, dedicated to promoting international friendship pursuant to its royal charter, an ethos which binds its global membership. ROSL has a Grade I listed clubhouse i ...

, Sarova Hotels,

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(

Kenya Kenya, officially the Republic of Kenya, is a country located in East Africa. With an estimated population of more than 52.4 million as of mid-2024, Kenya is the 27th-most-populous country in the world and the 7th most populous in Africa. ...

) Ltd and (

Zimbabwe file:Zimbabwe, relief map.jpg, upright=1.22, Zimbabwe, relief map Zimbabwe, officially the Republic of Zimbabwe, is a landlocked country in Southeast Africa, between the Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers, bordered by South Africa to the south, Bots ...

) Ltd and

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. The five African winners of the

Nobel Prize for Literature The Nobel Prize in Literature, here meaning ''for'' Literature (), is a Swedish literature prize that is awarded annually, since 1901, to an author from any country who has, in the words of the will of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, "in t ...

have supported the Caine Prize as patrons:

Wole Soyinka Wole Soyinka , (born 13 July 1934) is a Nigerian author, best known as a playwright and poet. He has written three novels, ten collections of short stories, seven poetry collections, twenty five plays and five memoirs. He also wrote two transla ...

Nadine Gordimer Nadine Gordimer (20 November 192313 July 2014) was a South African writer and political activist. She received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1991, recognised as a writer "who through her magnificent epic writing has ... been of very great ben ...

Naguib Mahfouz Naguib Mahfouz Abdelaziz Ibrahim Ahmed Al-Basha (, ; 11 December 1911 – 30 August 2006) was an Egyptian writer who won the 1988 Nobel Prize in Literature. In awarding the prize, the Swedish Academy described him as a writer "who, through wo ...

J. M. Coetzee John Maxwell Coetzee Order of Australia, AC Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, FRSL Order of Mapungubwe, OMG (born 9 February 1940) is a South African and Australian novelist, essayist, linguist, and translator. The recipient of the 2003 ...

and

Abdulrazak Gurnah Abdulrazak Gurnah (born 20 December 1948) is a Tanzanian-born British novelist and academic. He was born in the Sultanate of Zanzibar and moved to the United Kingdom in the 1960s as a refugee during the Zanzibar Revolution. His novels includ ...

. Sir Michael's widow, Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne, was founding president of the council and Jonathan Taylor was the first Chair, with Nick Elam the first administrator.

Critical reception

In 2011, Nigerian-American writer and critic Ikhide Ikheloa criticized the Caine Prize: "The creation of a prize for 'African writing' may have created the unintended effect of breeding writers willing to

stereotype In social psychology, a stereotype is a generalization, generalized belief about a particular category of people. It is an expectation that people might have about every person of a particular group. The type of expectation can vary; it can ...

Africa for glory. The mostly lazy, predictable stories that made the 2011 shortlist celebrate orthodoxy and mediocrity. … The problem now is that many writers are skewing their written perspectives to fit what they imagine will sell to the West and the judges of the Caine Prize." In 2019, a story was removed from the shortlist after "an allegation" led to admission of "the author's failure to attribute a core source", i. e. Laleh Khadivi's 2014 story.

List of winners

Notes

{{Reflist, 30em

References

*Rose-Innes, Henrietta. 2009. ''Ten Years of the Caine Prize for African Writing''. New Internationalist Publications (Oxford, United Kingdom).

External links

Caine Prize for African Writing
official website 2000 establishments in England African literary awards Awards established in 2000 English literary awards English-language literary awards Short story awards