Sierra Leone writer wins Caine Prize

The winner of the 10th Caine Prize for African Writing is Olufemi Terry for his book, Stickfighting Days.

It is an urchin’s account of a depressing life in which stick fighting becomes an occasion for glue-induced murder.

This is a story of dystopia — an account of the dead-end of life in which a game, and the honour associated with it, can easily become life-threatening.

Olufemi was shortlisted along with Kenya’s Lily Mabura, South Africans Ken Barris and Alex Smith and Zambian Namwali Serpell.

A well travelled man who has lived in Nigeria, the UK, Cote d’Ivoire, Kenya, Somalia and Uganda, Olufemi — like many “new” African writers — has also found Cape Town hospitable.

Stickfighting Days first appeared in Chimurenga, an experimental and revolutionary periodical published out of Cape Town.

Olufemi’s winning story, like that of the 2009 winner E.C Osondu, is told from the point of view of a child, and is by a West African.

The 2008 winner Henrietta Rose-Innes and the 2007 winner Monica Arac de Nyeko were from South and East Africa, respectively.

Two Kenyans, Parselelo Kantai and Mukoma wa Ngugi, were shortlisted in 2009.

The question of the subject matter of these stories and the regional distribution of the winners seem to be fertile grounds for speculation on the background dynamics that determine the long list of the entries, the shortlist and the eventual winner.

The politics of literature and prizes, especially awards given in the West, should be of concern to those interested in African art and culture.

There is, of course, no doubt that awards such as the Commonwealth Prize for African Writing, the Caine Prize or the Penguin Prize for African Writing have contributed immensely to production and dissemination of literature from the continent.

Parselelo Kantai feels that such prizes “have done more to internationalise the new African writer (and thus liberate him) than a generation of head-banging against the stone walls of a publishing industry wholly devoted to the production of textbooks underwritten by Western donors.”

For him, the sorry state of local publishing outlets and their cavalier attitude to writers makes the international magazines in which many of the winning stories are initially published, a worthy proposition for young and budding writers.

That view is supported by Doreen Baingana, the winner of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize Best First Book Award (Africa Region) for her collection of short stories Tropical Fish.