Her winning short story called Hitting Budapest, is about the adventures of a group of poor children from a shanty town who decide to raid a well off neighbourhood for guavas. They encounter a rich woman and insult her for throwing away a piece of pizza, a food they discover for the first time in their lives. On their way back home they come across the body of someone who has committed suicide.
NoViolet told SW Radio Africa: “The real story is in the issues. Issues like what happens when two different worlds, rich and poor, meet in problematic ways, innocence and the loss of it, violence, humanity and the lack of it. Those are some of the issues in the story I’m interested in.”
Asked if her story is related to the current situation in Zimbabwe, she said it was linked through the interrogation of the issue of poverty. “The real issue is that a lot of people are living below the poverty line and children, being society’s most vulnerable victims, are suffering the brunt of it,” she said.
As Caine Prize winner NoViolet receives £10,000 cash and will be given the opportunity to take up a month’s residence at Georgetown University, Washington DC, as a writer-in-residence. The award will cover all travel and living expenses.
NoViolet works as a lecturer at Cornell University in New York and said one day she hopes to become a full time writer.
In 2004 another Zimbabwean, Brian Chikwava, won the Caine Prize for his story Seventh Street Alchemy. He has gone onto publish his first novel, Harare North.
Ellah Allfrey OBE, publisher and Granta deputy editor, said the prize will catapult NoViolet to great opportunities in the publishing world. “What the Caine Prize does is it really hurtle you up onto the world’s stage. It brings you to the attention of publishers and literary agents. I think it can only be a good thing,” she explained.
Post published in: Arts