Zimbabwe’s NoViolet Bulawayo has won the 2011 Caine Prize for African Writing, described as Africa’s leading literary award, for her short story entitled Hitting Budapest, from The Boston Review, Vol 35, No 6 – Nov/Dec 2010.
The chair of judges, award-winning author Hisham Matar, announced NoViolet Bulawayo as the winner of the £10 000 prize at a dinner held on Monday 11 July at the Bodleian Library in Oxford.
Hisham Matar said: “The language of Hitting Budapest crackles. Here we encounter Darling, Bastard, Chipo, Godknows, Stina and Sbho, a gang reminiscent of Clockwork Orange.
But these are children, poor and violated and hungry. This is a story with moral power and weight, it has the artistry to refrain from moral commentary. NoViolet Bulawayo is a writer who takes delight in language.”
NoViolet Bulawayo was born and raised in Zimbabwe. She recently completed her Master’s in Fine Arts at Cornell University, in the US, where she is now a Truman Capote Fellow and lecturer of English.
Another of her stories, Snapshots, was shortlisted for the 2009 SA PEN/Studzinski Literary Award.
NoViolet has recently completed a novel manuscript tentatively titled We Need New Names, and has begun work on a memoir project.
