Nigerian Emerges Winner at Caines Prize For African Writing

Tope Folarin emerged as the winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing for the year 2013. He follows Nigeria’s Rotimi Babatunde, who won the prize for his story Bombay’s Republic.

In an interview with the BBC, he explains the meaning behind his story. Miracle – a short story, is set in an evangelical Nigerian church in Texas. He says that the story is about a Nigerian preacher coming to America to give Nigerians in America hope.

There were 96 entries from 16 African countries,  and the judges of the £10,000 ($15,000) prize chose five finalists, four of them from Nigeria and one from Sierra Leone.
The writers are Nigeria’s Elnathan John (‘Bayan Layi’), Abubakar Adam Ibrahim (‘The Whispering’), Chinelo Okparanta (‘America’), Tope Folarin (‘Miracle’), and Sierra Leone’s Pede Hollist (‘Foreign Aid’)

Tope received $15,000 at an event that held at the Bodleian Library in Oxford.