'Apocalyptic ' SA tale wins prize.

Dion Frost

09 July 2008

Ms Rose-Innes won the $20000 ( £10000 ) Caine Prize for African Writing for Poison at a rite on Mon. night. It is set in Cape city as folks are made to leave an ecological disaster. With the iconic Table Mountain obscured by poisonous clouds, some leave the town late and finish up stuck outside, made to interact with one another. Judge Jude Kelly "It isn't so much about the explosion - on a deeper level, it's a dissection of normal social divisions and social groupings. The prize, given for a short story, can be awarded to African writers who have made public fiction inside Africa or elsewhere on the planet. The prize is named after Sir Michael Caine, a previous manager of Booker plc. Last year's Caine Prize was won by Ugandan writer Monica Arac de Nyeko for the Jambula Tree, a tale about lesbianism.

[when] something is coming towards you and will destroy you". What the prize gives you is time to scribble, the most dear commodity for a writer. Henrietta Rose-Innes "The account employed imagery that pushed the tale forward and it showed a pointy and rare maturity" she announced.

Ms Rose-Innes asserted the protagonist of Poison, Lynn, was a version of herself - a middle-class lady in her thirties who has "lost her way". Unlike the other personalities, Lynn is not able to conform herself to the changing world and is left eating crisps at the garage as the others leave. "She can't stay in her old techniques, symbolized by Cape city which is now under threat, but she's also not really prepared to take that step into the broader fact of the country with its hazards and opportunities" Ms Rose-Innes said to the BBC's Network Africa programme. Ms Rose-Innes is comparatively experienced compared to latest winners. She has got already had 2 books released in addition to modifying an anthology of South African writing. Her stories Shark's Egg and The Rocket Alphabet have been well received - she studied creative writing under the Nobel laureate JM Coetzee. Winning the prize guarantees more interest from publishers and reviewers in addition to including a month's grant at Georgetown varsity in Washington DC. "What the prize gives you is time to scribble, the most dear commodity for a writer" she revealed. "It also gives me no further excuses for not writing that next novel, which is good for me.".