Alt A was at the Caine Prize Dinner to see Nigerian writer Lesley Nneka Arimah win the 2019 Caine Prize for African Writing, described as Africa’s leading literary award, for her short story ‘Skinned’, published in McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern (Issue 53).
The Chair of the Caine Prize judging panel, internationally acclaimed Kenyan author and poet Dr Peter Kimani, announced Lesley as the winner of the £10,000 prize at an award dinner on Monday 8 July. The ceremony was held for the third time at Senate House, University of London, in partnership with SOAS and the Centre for African Studies.
‘Skinned’ envisions a society in which young girls are ceremonially ‘uncovered’ and must marry in order to regain the right to be clothed. It tells the story of Ejem, a young woman uncovered at the age of fifteen yet ‘unclaimed’ in adulthood, and her attempts to negotiate a rigidly stratified society following the breakdown of a protective friendship with the married Chidinma. With a wit, prescience, and a wicked imagination, ‘Skinned’ is a bold and unsettling tale of bodily autonomy and womanhood, and the fault lines along which solidarities are formed and broken.
Announcing the award, Peter Kimani said: “The winner of this year’s Caine Prize for African Writing is a unique retake of women’s struggle for inclusion in a society regulated by rituals. Lesley Nneka Arimah’s Skinned defamiliarizes the familiar to topple social hierarchies, challenge traditions and envision new possibilities for women of the world. Using a sprightly diction, she invents a dystopian universe inhabited by unforgettable characters where friendship is tested, innocence is lost, and readers gain a new understanding of life.”
Lesley Nneka Arimah was born in the UK and grew up in Nigeria and wherever else her father was stationed for work. She was selected for the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 and her debut collection What it Means When A Man Falls From The Sky won the 2017 Kirkus Prize, the 2017 New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award, and was selected for the New York Times/PBS book club among other honours. Lesley is a 2019 United States Artists Fellow in Writing. She lives in Las Vegas
‘Skinned’ is available to read now on the Caine Prize website.
Joining Lesley on this year’s shortlist were:
Meron Hadero (Ethiopia) for ‘The Wall’, published in McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, Issue 52 (2018).
Read ‘The Wall’
Cherrie Kandie (Kenya) for ‘Sew My Mouth’, published in ID Identity: New Short Fiction From Africa (2018).
Read ‘Sew My Mouth’
Ngwah-Mbo Nana Nkweti (Cameroon) for ‘It Takes A Village Some Say’, published in The Baffler (2017).
Read ‘It Takes A Village Some Say’
Tochukwu Emmanuel Okafor (Nigeria) for ‘All Our Lives’, published in ID Identity: New Short Fiction From Africa (2018).
Read ‘All Our Lives’
Each Caine Prize shortlisted writer receives £500.
Alongside Dr Peter Kimani on the 2019 judging panel were Sefi Atta, Nigerian author and playwright shortlisted for the 2006 Caine Prize; Margie Orford, acclaimed author hailed as the “queen of South African crime-thriller writers”; Scott Taylor, professor, and director of the African Studies Program at Georgetown University; and Olufemi Terry, Sierra Leone-born author and winner of the 2010 Caine Prize.
A special anniversary anthology containing all winning stories throughout the history of the Caine Prize will be published later this year
