Nigerian Writer Wins Caine Prize

Rotimi Babatunde

A Nigerian writer Rotimi Babatunde has won this year’s prestigious Caine Prize for African writing.

He won the highest literary award in Africa for his work “Bombay’s Republic” about Nigerian soldiers who fought in Burma during World War II.

The prize which is dotted with a cash award of £10,000 ($15,700) focuses on the short story genre.

In an interview with BBC said his work was a story about “liberation and how a character can have his world widened.”

He is one of the five writers announced in May as nominees for the award. He received his prize in Oxford on July 3.

Bernardine Evaristo, who chared the judges described Babatunde’s story as “ambitious, darkly humorous and in soaring, scorching prose exposes the exploitative nature of the colonial project and the psychology of independence.”

In addition to prize money Babatunde will become a writer-in-residence fellowship at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., at the Lannan Center for Poetics and Social Practice.

Congratulations.