8 July 2009
Lagos — Nigerian writer E C Osondu became the third winner of the £10,000 Caine Prize for African Writing. He won this year's edition, which is the 10th year of the prize, with his short story "Waiting", which was published in the October 2008 issue of Guernicamag.com.
According to the chair of the judges, New Statesman chief sub-editor Nana Yaa Mensah, the story was "powerfully written with not an ounce of fat on it-and deeply moving".
This was at the awards ceremony on Monday evening held at the Bodleian Library in Oxford.
With this prize, Osondu also wins the opportunity of taking up a month's residence at Georgetown University, Washington DC, as a "Caine Prize/Georgetown University Writer-in-Residence".
The award will cover all travel and living expenses.
Awarded annually for a short story by an African writer published in English, the prize is named after the late Sir Michael Caine, who was formerly chairman of Booker Plc.
Osondu's entry beat the works of other four writers from Ghana, Kenya, and South Africa.
He was born in Nigeria and worked in advertising in Lagos before moving to New York to study creative writing at Syracuse University.
He received the Allen and Nirelle Galso Prize for Fiction and his story "A Letter from Home" was recognised as one of the best Internet Stories of 2006.
He currently teaches Literature at Providence College, Rhode Island.
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