        | | Caine
Prize 2008 winner announced
 South
Africa’s
Henrietta Rose-Innes
has won the 2008 Caine Prize for African Writing, described as Africa’s
leading literary award, for Poison from ‘Africa Pens’, published by
Spearhead, an imprint of New Africa Books, Cape Town, 2007. The Chair of Judges,
Southbank Centre Artistic Director Jude Kelly, announced Henrietta as the winner
of the £10,000 prize at a dinner on Monday 7 July in the Bodleian Library in
Oxford
.
Jude
Kelly said that the story showed “a sharp talent, a rare maturity and a poetic
intelligence that is both subtle and deeply effective. It is writing of the
highest order.”
Henrietta Rose-Innes
was also shortlisted for the Caine Prize in 2007 for her short story Bad
Places. Last year she won the 2007 HSBC/South African PEN Literary Award for
Poison. Henrietta was born in
Cape Town
and obtained her MA in Creative Writing at the
University
of
Cape Town
, after also studying archaeology and biological anthropology. Her first Novel Shark’s Egg, was published in 2000 and her second, The
Rocket Alphabet, appeared in 2004. Henrietta’s short stories and essays
have appeared in various publications and she has also compiled an anthology of
South African writing, Nice Times! A book
of South African pleasures and delights (2006). In 2007 and 2008 she was a
fellow at the Akademie Schloss Solitude,
Stuttgart
.
Also
on this year’s shortlist were:
 |
Mohammed
Naseehu Ali (Ghana) ‘Mallam Sile’,
from ‘The Prophet of Zongo’, published by Amistad, an imprint of Harper
Collins, NY, 2005
|
|
Stan
ley Onjezani Kenani (Malawi) ‘For
Honour’ from ‘African Pens’, published by Spearhead, an imprint of
New Africa Books, Cape Town, 2007
|
|
Gill
Schierhout (
South Africa
) ‘The Day of the Surgical
Colloquium’ from ‘African Pens’, published by Spearhead, an
imprint of New Africa Books,
Cape Town
, 2007
|
|
Uzor
Maxim Uzoatu (
Nigeria
) ‘
Cemetery
of
Life
’ from ‘Wasafiri’ No52 Autumn 2007 |
The
Chair of Judges, Jude Kelly, became Artistic Director of the Southbank Centre in
2005. An experienced director of over 100 productions, she was awarded an OBE for services to the theatre in 1997 and is
Chair of Culture, Ceremonies and Education at the
London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games. Joining Jude on the panel
this year were Jamaican poet and professor of English, Mark McMorris; Hisham
Matar, author of the internationally successful first novel In
the Country of Men; Hannah Pool, an Eritrean author and Guardian journalist;
and second time judge, the South African poet, novelist and lecturer Jonty
Driver
Once
again the winner of the £10,000 Caine Prize, known as the ‘African Booker’,
will take up a month’s residence at
Georgetown
University,
Washington
DC
, as a ‘Caine Prize/Georgetown University Writer-in-Residence’. The award
will cover all travel and living expenses.
For
further information on the Caine Prize please contact:
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