[London, UK] – The Caine Prize for African Writing is delighted to announce that Zimbabwean writer NoViolet Bulawayo has been awarded the 2025 Best of Caine Award for her short story, Hitting Budapest, which originally won the Prize in 2011.
Marking the Prize's 25th anniversary, the Best of Caine Award is an honorary prize celebrating the most outstanding winning story from the Prize's 25 year history. Ellah Wakatama OBE, Chair of the Caine Prize, announced NoViolet Bulawayo as the winner at the inaugural Words Across Waters Afro Lit Festival on Saturday, 27 September 2025.
This year’s judging panel, comprised of Nobel Laureate Prof. Abdulrazak Gurnah (Chair); award-winning author Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi; and critically acclaimed film producer Tony Tagoe.
Speaking on the winning story, Prof. Abdulrazak Gurnah said: “It was a tremendously impressive collection of stories to read through, but the decision to award the Best of Caine Prize to NoViolet Bulawayo was unanimous and swift. The judges were impressed with the control of voice the story demonstrated and the superb evocation of a childhood vision.”
Speaking on receiving the award, NoViolet Bulawayo said: “I wish to thank the Caine Prize and the judging panel for this incredible honor. Winning the Caine Prize as an unpublished writer back in 2011 was truly the kind of defining highlight to jumpstart a career. It brought my work to a global audience, affirmed my literary path, and strengthened my confidence and commitment to writing so that finishing a first novel worthy of the recognition bestowed on me by Africa’s most prestigious literary award – my first ever recognition – was non-negotiable. Now, receiving the Best of Caine Award these many years later feels like a moment to reflect on the journey.
“I warmly congratulate the twenty-four remarkable winning authors and finalists whose works have helped define the prize up to this moment. That many have gone on to build distinguished careers, producing diverse and influential works that continue to challenge, expand, enrich, and reimagine what African literature can be, speaks to the indelible impact of the prize. It is twenty-five years of consistency, excellence, and vision – our present is vibrant, and the future promises even more. And it is to the future writers still to come, those whose voices we are yet to hear, that I dedicate this Best of Caine Award—I am truly excited to read you all, and witnessing how you continue to shape the landscape of African literature.”
The Caine Prize for African Writing has played a pivotal role in shaping the careers of African writers, offering unmatched global visibility and opportunities, including publishing deals and writing fellowships.
ENDS
NOTES TO EDITOR
THE CAINE PRIZE
The Caine Prize for African Writing is a registered charity that aims to bring African writing to a wider audience using its annual literary award. In addition to administering the Prize, the charity works to connect readers with African writers through a series of public events. It also helps emerging writers across the continent to enter the world of mainstream publishing through the annual online editing programme, and writer’s workshop which takes place in a different African country each year.
The stories written at Caine Prize workshops are published annually alongside the Prize's shortlisted stories in a Caine Prize Anthology by Cassava Republic Press in the UK and publishers on the African continent.
It is named after the late Sir Michael Caine, former Chairman of Booker plc, who was Chairman of the 'Africa 95' arts festival in Europe and Africa in 1995 and for nearly 25 years, Chairman of the Booker Prize management committee. After his death, friends and colleagues decided to establish a prize of £10,000 to be awarded annually in his memory.
WINNER’S BIO
NOVIOLET BULAWAYO
NoViolet Bulawayo is the winner of the 2011 Caine Prize for African Writing for her short story, “Hitting Budapest,” and author of the novels Glory, and We Need New Names. Her books have been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and longlisted for the Women’s Prize, the Aspen Words Literary Prize, the Rathbones Folio Prize, and won the Pen/Hemingway Award, the LA Times Book Prize Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, among others. NoViolet earned her MFA at Cornell University, where she currently teaches.
JUDGES’ BIO
ABDULRAZAK GURNAH
Abdulrazak Gurnah is the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature 2021. He is the author of ten novels: Memory of Departure, Pilgrims Way, Dottie, Paradise(shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Whitbread Award), Admiring Silence, By the Sea (longlisted for the Booker Prize and shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times Book Award), Desertion (shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize) The Last Gift, Gravel Heart, and Afterlives, which was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Fiction 2021 and longlisted for the Walter Scott Prize. He was Professor of English at the University of Kent, and was a Man Booker Prize judge in 2016. He lives in Canterbury.
JENNIFER NANSUBUGA MAKUMBI
Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi is a Ugandan novelist and short story writer. She has a PhD from Lancaster University. Her first novel, Kintu (Oneworld, 2018), won the Kwani? Manuscript Project in 2013 and was longlisted for the Etisalat Prize in 2014. She was awarded the 2014 Commonwealth Short Story Prize for 'Let's Tell This Story Properly', which featured in her first collection, Manchester Happened (Oneworld, 2019). She was awarded the prestigious Windham-Campbell Prize for Fiction 2018 and lives in Manchester, where she lectures in Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University. In 2020, she was selected as one of 100 Most Influential Africans of 2020 by New African magazine.
TONY TAGOE
Tony Tagoe is a Ghanaian film producer, music executive, and creative strategist whose career spans music, film, brand partnerships, and cultural advocacy. An Oxford graduate, Tagoe co-founded Deal Real, the legendary Carnaby Street music store that became a launchpad for artists including Amy Winehouse, Kanye West, Mark Ronson, and John Legend. In artist management, Tagoe currently manages Grammy-winning producer Guilty Beatz and visual artist Prince Gyasi.
Tagoe’s film career includes co-producing Beasts of No Nation, Black Earth Rising and Borga, along with credits on Das Netz. His brand work spans Nike, Adidas, Sony, Mercedes Benz, Red Bull, Vodafone, Diageo, and Apple. He sits on the Global Citizen: Move Afrika Committee and Soho House Committee. He is Co- Founder of TDA Films and TD Akuna Studios.