"Hunter Emmanuel" by Constance Myburgh 4 of 5 Caine Prize Stories

"Hunter Emmanuel" by Constance Myburgh (2010, 10 pages)

Blogging the Caine Year Three 2012

My posts on Caine Prize Stories in 2010 and 2011

My Ranking of the 2012 Stories So Far

1.  "Bombay's Republic" by Rotimi Babatunde-worthy to be a winner

2.  "Love on Trial" by Stanley Kenani-

3.  "Urban Zoning" by Billy Kahora

4.  "Hunter Emmanuel" by Contance Myburg (worse by far Caine story)

So far "Bombay's Republic" is the best by far.   

The Caine Prize is considered Africa's leading literary award.    Entry is open to anyone from an African country and the form of work is the short short.   The patrons of the prize include three African winners of the Nobel Prize for literature, Nadine Gordimer, J. M. Coetzee and Wole Soyinka.    Chinua Achebe, winner of the International Man Booker prize,  is also a patron.    The award comes with 10,000 British Pounds  and is given out annually at a celebratory event in Oxford.     The short story is seen as a continuation of the tradition of African story telling which is one of the reasons the award focuses on that genre.    The award began in 2000.   

I began blogging on the Caine Prize short listed stories in 2010.   As far as I know I was the only person to do this.  In 2011 six bloggers posted on the stories which resulted in some very good posts and conversations.   In 2011 much of the comments were about whether or not the stories were a form of what was called "African Poverty Porn".   In 2010 there were several good stories and the winner, "Stick Fighting Days" by Olufemi Terry was just wonderful.  The 2011 stories were of lower quality.   There are now 19 bloggers posting on the stories this year.


"Hunter Emmanuel" is by far the worse Caine Prize story I have read in the last three years.   There were some 120 stories submitted to the judges for consideration and if this is really one of the best,then my extreme sympathies to the judges.    In 2011 a lot of people, myself included, felt the stories were written with western readers in mind, readers who wanted to be excited by stories of corruption, brutality and poverty. Prior Caine selectees have acknowledged they were doing  this. The term used to describe such stories is "African Poverty Porn". (This is not my expression, I learned it from African based bloggers last year.)  In 2012 the judges announced that is not what they want to see this year.   I guess it slipped there mind when they short listed "Hunter Emmanuel".


I do not want to spend a lot of time on this story as it not really worthy of being included here with the, stories of the wonderful writers I have posted on.   The story centers on a "whore" (the term the author uses over and over) whose leg was cut off and thrown up in a tree.   Hunter Emmanuel  is walking through a forest scheduled to be logged and he sees a woman's leg hanging way up in a tree.    His first thought is to the body parts of the woman.  Here is some of the dialogue between Emmanuel and the woman.


Woman-"Someone cut of my leg, that's something I'd remember".
Emmanuel- "You think the police are going to solve this one.  You are a whore.  That is already bad.  But you are also a whore that is still alive.  That's worse.  If you were dead there would be more of a chance they'd give a shit".


There is a link on the Caine Prize webpage where you can read this.   I will not put it on The Reading Life.   I do not endorse this story to anyone.

There is a link to the other posts on the Caine Prize here.   If you read the posts of the others posting on the Caine stories you will find a lot of geopolitical data.  

Mel u

Love on Trial" by Stanley Kenani -3rd of 5 posts on the Caine Prize Short List

"Love on Trial" by Stanley Kenani (2011, 15 pages)

Blogging the Caine Year Three 2012

My posts on Caine Prize Stories in 2010 and 2011

My Ranking of the 2012 Stories So Far

1.  "Bombay's Republic" by Rotimi Babatunde-worthy to be a winner

2.  "Love on Trial" by Stanley Kenani-

3.  "Urban Zoning" by Billy Kahora

So far "Bombay's Republic" is the best by far

The Caine Prize is considered Africa's leading literary award.    Entry is open to anyone from an African country and the form of work is the short short.   The patrons of the prize include three African winners of the Nobel Prize for literature, Nadine Gordimer, J. M. Coetzee and Wole Soyinka.    Chinua Achebe, winner of the International Man Booker prize,  is also a patron.    The award comes with 10,000 British Pounds  and is given out annually at a celebratory event in Oxford.     The short story is seen as a continuation of the tradition of African story telling which is one of the reasons the award focuses on that genre.    The award began in 2000.   

I began blogging on the Caine Prize short listed stories in 2010.   As far as I know I was the only person to do this.  In 2011 six bloggers posted on the stories which resulted in some very good posts and conversations.   In 2011 much of the comments were about whether or not the stories were a form of what was called "African Poverty Porn".   In 2010 there were several good stories and the winner, "Stick Fighting Days" by Olufemi Terry was just wonderful.  The 2011 stories were of lower quality.   There are now 19 bloggers posting on the stories this year.


I will be posting, as will a number of others, on a story a week for the next five weeks.   So far all three of the 2012 stories have been better than any of the 2011 stories.  

"Love on Trial" by Stanley Kenani is set in Malawi.   Homosexual behavior is illegal there and carries very long prison sentences.   Like "Urban Zoning" heavy drinking plays a central part in this story.  I as a rule am turned off by stories, novels, TV shows and movies that center on heavy drinkers or drug abusers.   I know this is a prejudice but it is how  I feel.   It is why even though I accept the technical brilliance of Raymond Carver I do not read him with any great interest.

The central character is a bar fly type.  The most fabulous thing he ever did was to come upon two men having sex in the restroom of the bar.   When he tells people about it they all profess great shock and many do not think it is even possible.   He begins to insist that people buy him a drink before he will tell the story. People come from far and wide to hear his story.   Soon he names the man in the story to the authorities.   The man ends up on TV being interviewed and being damned as the basest of creatures acting against the laws of God.  He ends up getting a long prison term.  A lot of human rights groups protest the sentence and Malawi ends up having a lot of vitally needed aid cut off because of this.  At the end of the story the man in the bar is found to have aids, we do not know how he contracted it.   He goes to the medical station and is told there is no medicine for aids victims because it was supplied by foreign countries who cut off their help when the man he informed on was sent to prison.

This is kind of an interesting story.   I liked the circular plot structure.    I do not see this story as a worthy winner as it is more a polemic  than a work of quality literature.

Official Biography of the author

Born in 1976, Stanley Onjezani Kenani is a writer from Malawi. Love on Trial is one of the short stories in his debut collection, For Honour and other stories, published in 2011 by Random House Struik in South Africa. In 2007, he was second runner-up in the HSBC-SA PEN award, judged by JM Coetzee, for the title story of his collection, which was also shortlisted for the Caine Prize in 2008. A poet who is also an accountant, Kenani lives and works in Geneva, Switzerland. He is currently finalizing his debut novel, Drama Republic.

There is a link to the other posts on the Caine Prize here.   If you read the posts of the others posting on the Caine stories you will find a lot of geopolitical data.  

Mel u

The Caine Prize Short List-2012-"Bombay's Republic" by Rotimi Babatunde

The Caine Prize Short List-2012-"Bombay's Republic" by Rotimi Babatunde

2012

Blogging the Caine Year Three

My post on Caine Prize Stories in 2010 and 2011

The Caine Prize is considered Africa's leading literary award.    Entry is open to anyone from an African country and the form of work is the short short.   The patrons of the prize include three African winners of the Nobel Prize for literature, Nadine Gordimer, J. M. Coetzee and Wole Soyinka.    Chinua Achebe, winner of the International Man Booker prize,  is also a patron.    The award comes with 10,000 British Pounds  and is given out annually at a celebratory event in Oxford.     The short story is seen as a continuation of the tradition of African story telling which is one of the reasons the award focuses on that genre.    The award began in 2000.   

I began blogging on the Caine Prize short listed stories in 2010.   As far as I know I was the only person to do this.  In 2011 a number of bloggers posted on the stories which resulted in some very good posts and conversations.   In 2011 much of the comments were about whether or not the stories were a form of what was called "African Poverty Porn".   In 2010 there were several good stories and the winner, "Stick Fighting Days" by Olufemi Terry was just wonderful.   In 2011 I thought the stories declined in quality a lot and I was disappointed in the winner.   

I will be posting, as will a number of others, on a story a week for the next five weeks.

If "Bombay's Republic" by Rotimi Babatunde is any indication, we are in for some totally great stories this year.   I really loved this story.   There is also, for most of use for sure including me, a lot to be learned about    colonial Nigeria in the WWII era.   As the story opens, young Nigerian men are being told that Hitler's army is right on the border of their country and if they invade they have terrible plans for the people of Nigeria.   Many enroll in the British army as all of their lives they have been indoctrinated to believe that the white man was superior and they were honored to be in their army.   Those who would not join were forced in to the army.   They all thought the war would only last for a couple of weeks.   

Babatunde does a great job of taking us through basic training and. the 40 day plus trip from Nigeria to the jungles of Burma where the Nigerian units were sent into the most dangerous of missions.   At first our central character admires the English officers but he soon sees their feet of clay.   The Nigerian units conduct themselves with great distinction.   The Japanese seem to have a special fear of them.    In fact when  ever the unit comes upon dead bodies of Nigerian soldiers, they find the Japanese have cut them up into many pieces as they think the Nigerians come back to life if they do not. Babutunde did a wonderful job of letting us see what it was like to fight in the Burmese jungle.   Just the bugs were enough to kill a lot of people on both sides.   He saw terrible things and he did them also.      One day he learns the war ended a week ago when the Americans dropped a very big bomb on the Japanese. 

Not that many of the Nigerian soldiers made it home and everybody had a lot of questions for our central character.   The war changed him in lots of subtle and large ways.   He no longer looked up to the whites or feared them, he had contempt for African policemen and such who enforced the rules of the colony.

The story develops wonderfully when he gets back home to Lagos.   I really do not want to give away more of this plot because it is so much fun, so smart and really flat our hilarious.   In the closing pages of  "Bombay's Republic"  Babatunde takes into a different mode of narrative that totally fits with the plot of the story, a marvelous combination of form and content.  

"Bombay"s Republic" is a great story, if  there are better stories to come than this  the we are in for a wonderful Caine Year.   The story has a lot to teach us about colonialism and government authority in general.   It seemed as it closed almost like an Orwellian precautionary fable.   His prose style is perfect.  I learned a lot about WWII as it impacted African colonies of England from this story.  

You can find all of the short listed stories at the Caine Prize web page, as well as more background information on the award.

Official Biography

Rotimi Babatunde

Rotimi Babatunde’s fiction and poems have been published in Africa, Europe and America in journals which include Die Aussenseite des Elementes and Fiction on the Web and in anthologies including Little Drops, Daybreak on the Land and A Volcano of Voices. He is a winner of the Meridian Tragic Love Story Competition organised by the BBC World Service and was awarded the Cyprian Ekwensi Prize for Short Stories by the Abuja Writers Forum (AWF). His plays have been staged and presented by institutions which include Halcyon Theatre, Chicago; Riksteatern (the Swedish National Touring Theatre), Stockholm; the Royal Court Theatre, the Institute for Contemporary Arts (ICA) and Churchill Theatre Bromley, all in London; and broadcast on the BBC World Service. He has been awarded literary fellowships by the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation in New York, by Fondazione Pistoletto’s Unidee Program and the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Centre in Italy, and by Ledig House and the MacDowell Colony in the United States. Rotimi Babatunde lives in Ibadan, Nigeria.

Here are the Blog posts up so far on "Bombay's Republic

Method to the Madness
The Oncoming Hope
Bookshy  
Stephen Derwent Partington
Backslash Scott
Zunguzungu

Feel free to join us!

The best literary work written on the fight in Burma is for sure The Harp of Burma by Micheo Takeyama, a story of the war from the point of view of a Japanese soldier who tries to reconcile it with his Buddhist faith

Mel u

The Caine Prize 2011 Short List-Story Five

"The Mistress's Dog" by David Medalie (2010, 10 pages)

The Short Listed Stories

Five of Five Stories

The Reading Life Caine Prize Project

The Caine Prize for African Writing will be awarded on July 11 at an award dinner in Oxford.    The Caine Prize is one of the world's top literary awards.    It is given to the author of a short story from a country in Africa.   (There is additional background information on the award in my prior post and on the Caine Prize Web Site.)    This month I am doing a series of posts on the five short stories that are short listed for the 2011 Caine Prize.

So far I have posted on "Hitting Budapest" by NoViolet Bulawayo,  "What Molly Knew" by Tim Keegan ,  "Butterfly Dreams by Beatrice Lamwaka and "In The Spirit of McPhineas Leta" by Laura Kubuisite.   I have enjoyed reading each  of these stories and am glad to have had the opportunity to post on them.    All four stories are very much worth reading.    

When I saw the title of the last story "The Mistress's Dog" by David Medalie I thought it sounded like the title for a story Anton Chekhov might have written.   "The Mistress's Dog" is The Reading Life pick for the 2011 Caine Prize.    

There is only one living person in "The Mistress's Dog", the wife, Nola, of a powerful business man, now deceased.    We do not know her exact age but it seems to be at least in her sixties.    She was married for many years to man we know only as "a powerful business man".    Her husband had the same secretary for thirty years.    For at least fifteen of those years she was the husband's mistress.   

As the story opens Nola is home alone but for the dog of the mistress who is sitting in her lap.   Nola thinks "I have always preferred cats".     This story is really tightly and beautifully written.   There are a couple of word choices that seem a bit awkward but other than that it is really a superb short story.    It is very interesting to see the mistress through the eyes of the wife.   We also can sense  the changing nature of their relationship over the years.    It is as if the wife almost feels sympathy for the mistress as she senses the powerful business man losing his ardor for the mistress just as he had done for the wife.    

This is such a well ploted and characterized story that I do not want to spoil it at all. 

It can be read on line at Caine Prize web page.

I think part of the high quality of this story originates in Medalie's obvious respect for the intelligence of his readers.    Medalie is a Professor of English at Pretoria University in South Africa.   He is the author of a novel, The Shadow Followers, that was short listed for a Commonwealth Literary award and a collection of short stories.   

As I said, this is my pick and guess for the winner of the 2011 Caine Prize.    My second choice is a tougher question.   I will pick "Butterfly Dreams" as it has multiple layers of meaning.

I will be reading the 12 Caine Work Shop stories in July and will post on each of them, maybe in groups maybe as  individual posts, depending on my reaction to them.

I think To See The Mountain and other stories which has 17 short stories should be a part of every school and public library collection.   I think it would sell well in bookstores and would be a good text for class room instruction in the short story.   

There is more information on the book at the publisher's web page.

Last year I think I was the only one to blog on the Caine Prize Short Stories.    This year I am very happy there are a number of very insightful posts on these stories.    An easy way to follow the posts would be to do a search on twitter for "Caine Prize".

I have not forgotten the notion of "Poverty Porn" or the element of  Orientalism (as defined by Edward Said) that can be seen in some of the stories.    Once I have read the 12 stories from the Caine Work Shop I will probably post a bit on these issues.

The awards dinner for the Caine Pize is July 11, to be held at Oxford.    If  you are interested in attending the details are on the Caine Web Page.   It sounds like a great event.     

Mel u

The Caine Prize 2011 Short List-Story Four

"In The Spirit of McPhineas Lata" by Lauri Kubuitsile (2010, 10 pages)

The Short Listed Stories

Forth of Five Stories

The Reading Life Caine Prize Project

The Caine Prize for African Writing will be awarded on July 11 at an award dinner in Oxford.    The Caine Prize is one of the world's top literary awards.    It is given to the author of a short story from a country in Africa.   (There is additional background information on the award in my prior post and on the Caine Prize Web Site.)    This month I am doing a series of posts on the five short stories that are short listed for the 2011 Caine Prize.

So far I have posted on "Hitting Budapest" by NoViolet Bulawayo,  "What Molly Knew" by Tim Keegan and "Butterfly Dreams by Beatrice Lamwaka.    Over all I liked all of these stories and felt the time spent in reading them was very worthwhile.   Once I have read all five of the short listed stories I will, just for fun, hazard a guess as to the winner.    All three of these stories are about the struggles of the poor to survive.

"In the Spirit of McPhineas Leta" by Lauri Kubuitsile is very different from the first three stories I posted on.   Kubuitsile is from Botswana.  She has published fourteen novels and children's books.    She has won several awards for her short stories.   

I did not like a whole lot about this story.    Maybe not everyone will relate to this but it reminded me of a script for a bad Amos and Andy Show (An American radio and then TV show that ran from about 1935 to 1952 and which made fun of  African-Americans in a grossly racist way).    I recently read Edward Said's profound Orientalism.    In this books he talks mainly about the middle east and India but a lot of what he says about the development of the attitudes of Europe toward what was once called the Orient is directly applicable to the Caine Prize stories.   One of the themes of Said's book is that in comparison to European colonizers, Asians were made to seem by "experts" as not capable of sublimating their drive for immediate pleasure in place of long term goals.  Some "experts" knew they were giving out false data and some did not but all were in the service of colonial masters.    That, in part, is one of the reasons the colonizers gave in explaining why "natives" were better off as part of  a colony than as independent nation.    It seems to me that this feeling is a dominant theme of this story.    It maybe that the story is making fun of these attitudes.    I do not think so but I am am open to the idea of it.

This story opens at the funeral for McPhineas Lata:

"This tale begins at the end ; McPhineas Lata, the

perennial bachelor who made a vocation of troubling

married women, is dead. The air above Nokanyana village

quivers with grief and rage, and not a small amount of

joy, because the troubling of married women, by its very

definition, involved a lot of trouble. But, maybe because

of his slippery personality, or an inordinate amount of

blind luck, McPhineas Lata seemed to dodge the bulk of

the trouble created by his behaviour, and left it for others

to carry on his behalf. He had, after all, admitted to Bongo

and Cliff, his left and right sidekicks, that troubling married

women was a perfect pastime because it was “all sweet and

no sweat”.

Some of the married women of the town are so upset by his departure that they  throw themselves on his grave site weeks after he is gone.    His activities were known to everyone of the village, including the husbands, who don't seem have been much bothered by the adultery of their wives.     It is almost as if he relieved them of the "business" of having to look to the needs of their wives.  Now that he is gone, the men get together in a meeting to try to figure out what he was doing for their wives that they were not.     They pool their resources and come up with some ideas to keep their wives a bit happier.    

The people in this story all seem like comic characters with no depth to them.    This story is meant to be funny but I did not find it amusing.     I was kind of relieved when I got to the end of this story (which I did read twice.)     It is very different from the other three stories I have read so far.   It is worth reading, if for no other reason, to expand your experience in this   area.     You can read it online at the  Caine Prize web page.    

I have been provided free reading material by the publisher for the Caine Prize Stoires, as I was also last year.

This is my second year blogging on the Caine Prize short stories.    Last year I think I might have been the only blogger to post on the stories, This year there is a very politically aware group of bloggers posting on each story.

The Sky and Everywhere in Between

Zunguzungu

The Oncoming Hope

Backslash Scott

The Mumpsimus

Method to the Madness

One  simple way to follow the postings  is by doing a Twitter search on 

"Caine Prize".


When I complete all five posts on the Caine Prize I will try try "handicap" a winner just for fun-I invite others to please join in.   I might also do a post on the concepts of "poverty porn" and "native experts" (as the term is used by Said) as they apply to the Caine Stories.    If I do feel inclined to write such a post I will call it "Orientalism and the Caine Prize Stories".    

There are 12 more stories in this year collection of Caine Prize Stories (stories that were done at one of the Caine Prize workshops)-I will read and post (maybe in groups) on all of these stories also.    


One more short listed story to go!

2011 Caine Prize Stories-17 in all

Mel u

The Caine Prize 2011 Short List-Story Three

"Butterfly Dreams" by Beatrice Lamwaka (2010, 12 pages)

The Short Listed Stories

Third of Five Stories

The Reading Life Caine Prize Project

The Caine Prize for African Writing will be awarded on July 11 at an award dinner in Oxford.    The Caine Prize is one of the world's top literary awards.    It is given to the author of a short story from a country in Africa.   (There is additional background information on the award in my prior post and on the Caine Prize Web Site.)    This year I am doing a series of posts on the five stories short listed for the 2011 Caine Prize.

So far I have posted on "Hitting Budapest" by NoViolet Bulawayo and "What Molly Knew" by Tim Keegan.    Over all I liked both of these stories and felt the time spent in reading them was very worthwhile.   Once I have read all five of the short listed stories I will, just for fun, hazard a guess as to the winner.

"Butterfly Dreams" by Patrice Lamwaka is bolder in the narrative techniques it makes use of than the first two stories.   Lamwaka is the General Secretary of the Ugandan Women Writers Organization.    She is an internationally published essayist and short story writer.    She is working on her first novel.

Like last years winner, "Stick Fighting Days" and "Hitting Budapest", "Butterfly Dreams" is about desperately poor children.    It focuses on a young girl, Lamuna, who was kidnapped to be a child soldier at age ten and now has been rescued and returned to her family.     The story is narrated by one of her siblings.    When ever a child is rescued and brought to the World Vision center his or her name is announced over the radio.   Lamuna's family is overjoyed to hear her name on the radio.   They have given her up for dead.   The description of their first view of Lamuna is powerful:

"You returned home. You were skinny as a cassava stem.

Bullet scars on your left arm and right leg. Your feet were

cracked and swollen as if you had walked the entire planet.

Long scars mapped your once beautiful face. Your eyes

had turned the colour of pilipili pepper. 

When you returned home, Lamunu, we were afraid. We

were afraid of you. Afraid of what you had become"

The family knows she has been through a terrible experience and she has probably killed innocent people.     She may have been brainwashed into thinking what she did was right.    Her family fears her now even though they do not want to admit it openly.   She needs to be some how cleansed.    In this passage we can see how the narrative works and some of what might be not perfect in this story.


"Afraid of what you had become. Ma
borrowed a neighbour’s layibi. Uncle Ocen bought an egg
from the market. You needed to be cleansed. The egg would
wash away whatever you did in the bush. Whatever the
rebels made you do. We know that you were abducted. You
didn’t join them and you would never be part of them. You
quickly jumped the layibi. You stepped on the egg, splashing
its egg yolk. You were clean. You didn’t ask questions. You
did what was asked of you. It’s like you knew that you had to
do this. Like you knew you would never be clean until you
were cleansed. Ma ululated. You were welcomed home. Back
home where you belonged."


Does this seem like the speech of a child from a very poor family?    My guess is "ululated" is a word beyond the predictable vocabulary of  most American or Australian college graduates.   That it  is out of place adds to the feeling that the narrator is not well realized.   Also I do not really think it is a good idea to use expressions from the language of the people depicted in the story (which I an assuming to be Acholi based on a comment)  just to throw in "local color".    It distracts from the story rather than drawing you in which is probably its purpose.   


The story does skillfully show how the family tries to  adjust to her return home.   At first she barely can or will speak.   We know as does her family that this is because of the horrors she has seen.   They family and the others in her village never really overcome their fear of her.   They long for her to be the little girl she was when she left, to hear her laugh and they hope she will still want to be a doctor like she did before.


The narrator tells the returning child they now live in a camp and are guarded by soldiers.   They live from food provided by aid workers and have given up their traditional diet.   Then it what I found to be a really odd speech by the narrator we read


"Lamunu, we don’t know how to tell you that Pa is no longer
with us. You may have noticed that he is not around. We
don’t know with which mouth to tell you that he was cut to
pieces by those who you were fighting for."


Of course this is tragic but does it not seem odd to say that she "may have noticed" the father is gone?     And further, don't you imagine Lamuna would have realized they were living in a camp?    It is like the author wants to observe the holy dictum of the modern short story-show don't tell-but she does not quite know how to do it in this case.    She uses a first person narrator, a child, to do the work of a third party narrator supplying background information and sort of loses our faith in the story in the process.





Any one who watches the BBC New Channel or CNN international will know about the abduction of children in Uganda to be used as soldiers.    


Is this story "African Poverty Porn"?    This a new to me expression I learned from others blogging on the Caine Prize stories.   Basically I think it means a story which  contributes no real new insights into the life of the poor in Africa and is meant to play on and into the sympathies of Western liberals by evoking the media cliches of African poverty.   (Of course a story could be brilliantly written and fall under this description .)      I would say that "Butterfly Dreams" will for sure be seen by many as "African Poverty Porn".   In this case it may be amplified in that we know Lamuna will have been raped many times.  

"Butterfly Dreams" is worth reading.   I think the only real flaw is in the vocabulary and persona of the narrator.   

You can read this story and the other Caine Short Listed Works HERE

This is my second year blogging on the Caine Prize short stories (my 2011 posts are HERE).   Last year I think I might have been the only blogger to post on the stories, this year there is a very politically aware group of bloggers posting on each story.

The Sky and Everywhere in Between

Zunguzungu

The Oncoming Hope

Backslash Scott

The Mumpsimus

Method to the Madness

One  simple way to see the postings  is by doing a Twitter search on "Caine Prize".



I urge anyone interested in African Short Stories to consider purchasing To See The Mountain, which contains the five short listed stories plus twelve others written at the Caine Short Story work shop.    It would be a great book for school libraries.


I am really enjoying and profiting from reading the other posts on these stories.   Once I have posted on the short listed stories, I will probably post on the twelve other stories in the Too See the Mountain in groups of four.   




Mel u

The Caine Prize 2011 Short List-Story Two

"What Molly Knew" by Tim Keegan (14 pages, 2008)

The Short Listed Stories

Second of Five Stories

The Reading Life Caine Prize Project

The Caine Prize for African Writing will be awarded on July 11 at an award dinner in Oxford.    The Caine Prize is one of the world's top literary awards.    It is given to the author of a short story from a country in Africa.   (There is additional background information on the award in my prior post and on the Caine Prize Web Site.)    This year I am doing a series of post on the five short stories that are on this years short list for the prize.     Yesterday I posted on "Hitting Budapest" by NoViolet  Bolawayo which I liked a lot.    It centers on a group of very poor children in Zimbabwe.    

"What Molly Knew" by Tim Keegan is very much a traditional crime story with a surprise ending.      Structurally it has all the hall marks of a short story called for by Frank O'Connor in his The Lonely Voice-A Study of the Short Story.    As the story opens Molly gets a phone call  from her son-in-law telling her that her only daughter, Sarah, has been murdered.    Keegan then gives us a very well done account of the relationship of Sarah and her mother.  He does tell us how things are between them, he does not show us.   In this he is in violation of one of the dictums of the modern short story, "show don't tell".    They seem very  close but it was a bond of shared history and a life held together half by acrimony half by the ties between a mother and her only daughter.    At first I was a bit shocked that Molly does not choose to call her husband at work (the step father of Sarah).   She tries to keep her routine as normal as possible as she waits for a police detective to come over.   Keegan does a very good job of letting us see the routine of Molly's life.   

Molly, in her mid fifties,  was widowed from Sarah's father when he died twenty years ago in a car crash.   She married Rollo to have a provider for her and Sarah.  Rollo was a good reliable earner .   He was a far from perfect husband, given to being a bit abusive while drinking and a womanizer in his younger days but as Molly says "what is she to do".   (Of course one could say, "Well Molly you could get out of your flat and get look for a job!")

Sarah married a man that Molly always hated, a psychologist.   As the story progresses  we learn that Sarah's husband was of mixed parentage and he is a "political agitator".    It is never said explicitly, but it is clear this is part of the issue between Sarah's parents and her husband.

When the detective shows up at the flat, he tells Molly it is most likely the husband who is the killer.   This is based on the fact that it is most often the man who kills his wife.   Further in this case there is no sign of anyone breaking in and nothing has been stolen.    The husband was the only one who could get in the apartment besides Sarah.    Rollo comes home and says he knew all along the husband was no good and he is not at all surprised by this.    

At this point in the story, neither Rollo or Molly have a lot to admire about them.   He is an abuser and sometimes a drunk.   Molly accepts this abuse for security for herself and her daughter.   Molly does not get comfort or even dignity, only shelter and food and a place in the world.    Rollo rejects his step daughter and her husband because he is of mixed blood.   Maybe the story is a symbolic representation of the reaction of older South Africans to the willingness of their children to accept the end of apartheid and race laws that the older generation has always cherished.     

There is a very powerful dramatic development at the end of this story.   I think a lot of people will want to read the Caine Prize short listed stories without knowing the endings in advance so I will tell no more of the plot.    Not everyone who reads this story has felt as I do, but the ending left me with very little regard for Molly.

This is a very traditional old fashioned story told in the third person.    I will enjoyed this story.   For fun, once I have read all the stories I will hazard a guess as who I think win

You can read this story and the other Caine Short Listed Works HERE

This is my second year blogging on the Caine Prize short stories (my 2011 posts are HERE).   Last year I think I might have been the only blogger to post on the stories, this year there is a very politically aware group of bloggers posting on each story.

The Sky and Everywhere in Between

Zunguzungu

The Oncoming Hope

Backslash Scott

The Mumpsimus

Method to the Madness

One  simple way to see the postings  is by doing a Twitter search on "Caine Prize".

I am really profiting from reading the posts of all those involved in reading the Caine short listed stories.    Some of the posters have the added insight that living in the countries where the stories are set gives them.

Tim Keegan is from Capetown, South Africa.    He is now a professional writer with several successful novels.   He has worked as an academic historian prior to writing full time

The New International  Books, the publisher for the Caine Prize, has kindly provided me a copy of their  wonderful book, To See the Mountain and Other Stories Caine workshop.     I was also provided an e-book.   

Several posters on the Caine Prize stories have said they seem to verge on "poverty porn".   This was a new expression to me, I admit, but I can see the point.   Are the Caine Prize stories just about tales of poverty to raise anguish and pity among those whose lives are far far away?   I think some feel it is unethical for a writer, I am being hypothetical, from a rich family who has been educated in London and has seen poverty only through the window of a limo  writing about the poor of Africa and claiming authenticity merely because of an accident of birth.   I do not agree with this concept myself but I respect it.   I might post more on this once I have read the other five stories.    

"What Molly Knew" is very well written and it will for sure make you think and perhaps expand your understanding of South Africa.

Mel u