Nigerian author Irenosen Okojie wins 2020 literary honour the Ako Caine Prize

NIGERIAN author Irenosen Okojie has won the AKO Caine Prize for African writing with her short story Grace Jones which deals with the unique questions of trauma and identity as well as pleasure and escape.

Held annually, the Caine Prize is a literary award for the best original short story by an African writer, whether in Africa or elsewhere but published in the English language. In May, a five-writer shortlist was released for the 20th edition that featured stories that speak eloquently to the human condition through a diverse array of themes and genres.

Earlier this week, Ms Okojie was announced the winner of the winner of the award which comes with a £10,000 prize. For this year's event, which was held virtually, the shortlisted authors were from Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda and Tanzania.

Three out of the five could pass for Nigerians as they had dual citizenship. Ms Okojie was one of the trip that included Chikodili Emelumadu for his short story What to Do When Your Child Brings Home and Jowhor Ile for Fisherman’s Stew.

Organisers of AKO Caine Prize postponed this year’s award ceremony due to the coronavirus pandemic, citing the safety of authors, staff, guests and partners as their topmost priority. However,  on Monday afternoon during the virtual award ceremony, Ms Okojie’s Grace Jones was pronounced the winning short story of the year for its radicality of logic, time and place and praised as risky, dazzling, imaginative and bold.

Grace Jones was published last year in Ms Okojie’s book, Nudibranch, her second short story collection and her third book, following her debut novel Butterfly Fish and her first collection Speak Gigantular. It tells the story of a Grace Jones impersonator and deals with questions of trauma and identity as well as pleasure and escape.

Among other things, the story chronicles the psychological and behavioural changes of the main character, Sidra, a young woman who becomes a celebrity impersonator who is wracked with guilt after her whole family dies in a fire that destroys their London flat. Kenneth Tharp, the chair of the judging panel and director of The Africa Centre, described the journey of Ms Okojie’s main protagonist Sidra, a young woman who has moved to London from Martinique as an exquisite and seamless movement between the exploration of the universal experiences of unspeakable suffering, pleasure and escape and the particular experience of being black and African in a global city such as London.

He added that as the Black Lives Matter protests continue, the story offers a salient exploration of what it can mean to embody and perform blackness in the world. Reacting to why she chose the story’s subject matter, Ms Okojie said it was important for her to write experimental fiction that centres on a black woman.

Ms Okojie also said she had always found the actual Grace Jones hugely inspiring and wanted to explore this idea of trying to subvert the pain of the past by hiding under a different character. She added that the award has given her confidence as a black and female experimental writer.