peter young’s listopia

Pascal Boegli   In Front of Her House   2008
Here are the five stories competing for this year's twelfth Caine Prize for African Writing, with the winner being announced next week on 11 July. I look forward to this every year and have usually managed to read at least a couple of the shortlisted stories if they've been online, yet this is the first year I've made an effort to catch all of them.

Noviolet Bulawayo (Zimbabwe), 'Hitting Budapest'  (THE BOSTON REVIEW, NOVEMBER–DECEMBER 2010)
A group of Zimbabwean street children descend on a neighbourhood to steal guavas. This has some great dialogue as the world-weary, seen-it-all kids try to talk the way of adults as they deal with a few unexpected situations. Slightly sad but also rather uplifting, and a real window onto another urban world.

Tim Keegan (South Africa), 'What Molly Knew'  (JOANNE HICHENS, ed., BAD COMPANY, 2008)
A white woman's only daughter is murdered at home in a Cape Town suburb, and everyone suspects her daughter's coloured husband. There is some economically effective characterisation here within a straightforward whodunnit framework, yet the clearly present subtext – that of overt or covert violence against women by angry or manipulative men – is what makes this story a quietly powerful one.

Lauri Kubuitsile (Botswana), 'In the Spirit of McPhineas Lata'  (JOANNE HICHENS, ed., THE BED BOOK OF SHORT STORIES, 2010)
A good-humoured yet sharply written story concerning some not-so-secret village life, clueless men and sex. The opening paragraph is a hook of the kind that lesser writers dream of, and everything that comes after held my attention perfectly to the end such that a week after reading I can recall more details of this story than any of the others shortlisted. Kubuitsile lets the reader feel in on the joke while at the same time letting you warm to all her hapless characters – it may not be the most serious of stories ever to come out of Botswana but it's still a superb one and IMHO deserves to win, although it probably won't.

Beatrice Lamwaka (Uganda), 'Butterfly Dreams'  (EMMA DAWSON, ed., BUTTERFLY DREAMS AND OTHER NEW SHORT STORIES FROM UGANDA, 2010)
A teenage girl who was abducted by anti-Museveni rebels to fight their war had been given up for dead, yet she has now returned home mentally and physically scarred. Written in the second person as an unsent letter to her, this rather touchingly documents her rehabilitation culminating in her return to primary school. I've read quite a bit of long and short fiction relating to Africa's child soldiers and this is one the better short stories, because a) the subject here does not have a voice and a sympathetic relative is having to provide the narrative for her, and b) it covers a lot of ground in such a short space and does what it sets out to do very well indeed.

David Medalie (South Africa), 'The Mistress's Dog'  (THE MISTRESS'S DOG: SHORT STORIES 1996–2010, 2010)
A South African love triangle story told after the event, but one that makes you repeatedly readjust your perspective on it because of the non-hierarchical order in which the author provides the key details. So it's a small victory of style over substance but although I also found that substance a little, well, uninteresting I do like the way Medalie reveals the intent of the story, ie. a victory for the powerless. Clever, but IMHO not award-winning stuff.

Favourite short story of the week: Olufemi Terry (Sierra Leone), 'Stickfighting Days'  (CHIMURENGA 12/13: DOCTOR SATAN'S ECHO CHAMBER, MARCH 2008)
A re-read of last year's winner because it's by far one of the best of all recent Caine Prize-winning short stories. A startlingly vivid, present tense, first-person story about homeless teenagers who live on a rubbish dump outside an unspecified African city and who, while challenging each other to stickfighting matches, do not always live up to their code of honour. The narrative is possibly too clear-headed to make this story's thirteen year-old, glue-sniffing, murderous protagonist entirely convincing, yet that shouldn't inhibit the reader from experiencing something that's raw yet lucid and well composed, all at the same time. Impressive.