by Kola Tubosun
Fantastic news! Out of this year’s five shortlisted stories for the annual Caine Prize for Writing, four of the stories are from Nigeria. This is unprecedented in the history of the organization. According to the announcement on the Caine Prize website,
“The five contrasting titles interrogate aspects of things that we might feel we know of Africa – violence, religion, corruption, family, community – but these are subjects that are deconstructed and beautifully remade. These are challenging, arresting, provocative stories of a continent and its descendants captured at a time of burgeoning change.”
The shortlisted stories are:
- Elnathan John (Nigeria) ‘Bayan Layi’ from Per Contra, Issue 25 (USA, 2012)
- Tope Folarin (Nigeria) ‘Miracle’ from Transition, Issue 109 (Bloomington, 2012)
- Pede Hollist (Sierra Leone) ‘Foreign Aid’ from Journal of Progressive Human Services, Vol. 23.3 (Philadelphia, 2012)
- Abubakar Adam Ibrahim (Nigeria) ‘The Whispering Trees’ from The Whispering Trees, published by Parrésia Publishers (Lagos, 2012)
- Chinelo Okparanta (Nigeria) ‘America’ from Granta, Issue 118 (London, 2012)
Like many literary-minded bloggers did last year, I intend to participating in this year’s pre-award review of the five short stories for the reading and critical public. Keep a date on this blog for a review of each of the stories, one for each week that passes between now and the announcement of the winner.
A review of Elnathan John’s Bayan Layi will be up here on the Nigerianstalk LitMag website and on the KTravula blog in coming days.
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Kola Tubosun is the Editor of the Nigerianstalk LitMag.