The 2015 Prize 

 

The Chair of Judges, Zoë Wicomb, announced Namwali Serpell as the winner of the £10,000 prize at a dinner held on Monday, 6 July at the Bodleian Library in Oxford. In its sixteenth year the Caine Prize received 153 qualifying short stories from 17 African countries, a record breaking number of entries. 

 

 

The Winner

zambia's first win 

Zambia’s Namwali Serpell has won the 2015 Caine Prize for African Writing, for her short story entitled “The Sack” from Africa39 (Bloomsbury, London, 2014). Namwali is the first Zambian writer to win the Caine Prize for African Writing. 

The Shortlist

AN EXCITING CROP OF STORIES 

From Nigeria to South Africa, hundreds of stories were wittled down to a shortlist of just five. Each shortlisted writer received £500 and each of these stories was published in New Internationalist’s Caine Prize 2015 Anthology, Lusaka Punk. 

The Judges

The panel was chaired by South African author Zoë Wicomb, television and radio journalist Zeinab Badawi, Man Booker Prize shortlistee Neel Mukherjee, Assistant Professor of English at the University of Georgetown Cóilín Parsons, and Brian Chikwava, winner of the 2003 Caine Prize.

The Anthology

Lusaka punk and other stories

'Lusaka Punk and Other Stories' brings together the five shortlisted authors' stories from The Caine Prize for African Writing 2015, along with 12 other stories from the best new writers. The anthology is published and sold by New Internationalist Books.