Kenya’s Okwiri Oduor has won the prestigious 2014 Caine Prize for African Writing for her short story, My Father’s Head.
“It gives me audiences and opportunities that were not previously possible. It is great that my work can be read by people that might not have been aware of it previously,” she told media.
Ms Oduor’s story explores the narrator’s difficulty in dealing with the loss of her father and looks at the themes of memory, loss and loneliness. The narrator works in an old people’s home and comes into contact with a priest, giving her the courage to recall her buried memories of her father.
Jackie Kay (a UK award-winning author who chaired the panel of judges) was full of praise for the story.
“Okwiri Oduor is a writer we are all really excited to have discovered. My Father’s Head is an uplifting story about mourning – Joycean in its reach. She exercises an extraordinary amount of control and yet the story is subtle, tender and moving. It is a story you want to return to the minute you finish it.”
Ms Oduor received the £10,000 (Sh1.5 million) prize and becomes the third Kenyan to win the prize after Binyavanga Wainaina (2002) and Yvonne Owuor (2003). The prize is awarded for a short story by an African writer – living in the continent or diaspora – published in English and between 3,000 to 10,000 words.
She was also named in the Africa39, a Hay Festival and Rainbow Book Club Project, that aims to select and celebrate 39 of the best writers from sub-Sahara African and the diaspora under 40 years.
The writers are selected for their potential and the talent to define the trends that will mark the future development of literature in a certain language or region. Ms Oduor directed the inaugural Writivism Literary Festival in Kampala, Uganda in August 2013.
Her novella, The Dream Chasers was highly commended in the Commonwealth Book Prize, 2012. She is a 2014 MacDowell Colony fellow and is currently at work on her debut novel. “The prize also gives me time to focus on my new novel as I won’t have to worry about other work for the near future,” she said.
As the winner, she will be given the opportunity to take up a month’s residence at Georgetown University, as a Writer-in-Residence at the Lannan Centre for Poetics and Social Practice.
Ms Oduor will also be invited to take part in the Open Book Festival in Cape Town in September 2014, the Storymoja Hay Festival in Nairobi and the Ake Festival in Nigeria.
The other shortlisted stories were; Phosphorescence by Diane Awerbuck (South Africa), Chicken by Efemia Chela (Ghana/Zambia), The Intervention by Tendai Huchu (Zimbabwe) and The Gorilla’s Apprentice by Kenya’s Billy Kahora.
NMG
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