Caine Prize for African Writing 2024

Nadia Davids, photo by John GutierrezThis year’s Caine Prize for African Writing has been won by Nadia Davids from South Africa, for her short story Bridling. Nadia Davids is from Cape Town, South Africa, but currently resides in Los Angeles, USA. She writes essays, plays and fiction; her first novel An Imperfect Blessing was published in 2014 and was shortlisted for the Pan-African Etisalat Prize for Literature. She is now working on her second novel. Bridling was first published in The Georgia Review in 2023 and the story is told from the point of view of a female actor performing with other women in a show which stages artworks made by men that depict women.

The Judges
All of this year’s Caine Prize judges are notable artists: poet, artist and filmmaker Julianknxx; writer, scholar and filmmaker Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu; Hip-Hop artist Tumi Molekane aka Stogie T; and novelist Ayesha Harruna Attah, as well as the chair, Zimbabwean novelist Chika Unigwe. “Bridling is an impressive achievement, a triumph of language, storytelling and risk-taking while maintaining a tightly controlled narrative about women who rebel”, said judging chair Unigwe. “It embodies the spirit of the Caine prize, which is to celebrate the richness and diversity of short stories by African writers.”

The Caine Prize
The Caine Prize is an annual award with the aim of bringing African writing to a wider audience. It also brings together readers with the writers through public events and helps new writers enter mainstream publishing with writers’ workshops which take place in a different African country each year. The Caine Prize is named after former Booker prize management committee chair, Sir Michael Harris Caine. He was also chairman of the 'Africa 95' arts festival in Europe and Africa in 1995. After his death, friends and colleagues decided to establish a prize of £10,000 to be awarded annually in his memory. This year there were 320 entries representing 28 countries, a record number of submissions. The first ever prize was awarded in 2000 to Sudanese writer Leila Aboulela. She is the author of numerous award-winning novels and her work has been translated into fifteen languages.

Winning storyCover A mind to silence and other stories, AKO Caine Prize anthology 2021-22
The winning story Bridling and an excerpt from the novel An Imperfect Blessing are available online.

Anthology
The winning short story, along with the other short-listed works, will appear in the 2024 Caine Prize anthology, Midnight In the Morgue and Other Stories, published by Cassava Republic Press.
The shortlist further comprised of:

  • Tryphena Yeboah (Ghana) for ‘The Dishwashing Women’, Narrative Magazine (Fall 2022)
  • Samuel Kolawole (Nigeria) for ‘Adjustment of Status’, New England Review, Vol. 44, #3 (Summer 2023)
  • Uche Okonkwo (Nigeria) for ‘Animals’, ZYZZYVA (2024)
  • Pemi Aguda (Nigeria) for ‘Breastmilk’, One Story, Issue #227 (2021)

Previous anthologies
The African Library has nearly all the published anthologies of the Caine Prize shortlisted short stories since the first one in 2000, Tenderfoots : a selection of works from the 2000 Caine Prize for African writing. The winning story of 2023, A Soul of Small Places by Mame Bougouma Diene & Woppa Diallo, can be read online here, together with the other shortlisted stories.

More links
Find below a selection of the most recent published anthologies in print

Angela Robson