04 Jul 2012 22:58:53
The "ambitious, darkly humorous" story of a Nigerian soldier fighting in Burma during the second world war has won Nigeria's Rotimi Babatunde the £10,000 Caine prize for African writing.
Babatunde, who beat authors from Kenya, Malawi, Zimbabwe and South Africa to win the prestigious award for a short story by an African writer published in English, tells of the experiences of Colour Sergeant Bombay in his winning piece Bombay's Republic. Chair of judges, the novelist and poet Bernadine Evaristo, praised his "vivid" descriptions. "It is ambitious, darkly humorous and in soaring, scorching prose exposes the exploitative nature of the colonial project and the psychology of independence," she said.
Evaristo had previously spoken of her desire to avoid the "stereotypical narratives" of African fiction when finding a winner, saying she wanted to "show there is a bigger picture" than the "familiar tragic stories" that come from the continent.
Babatunde said he was moved to write his story because "that context of world war two in African history, and the story of the Nigerians who went to the Burmese front, has not been properly explored". Growing up hearing stories of the war, and reading about it, he also wanted to "commemorate the sacrifice" of the soldiers who died there.
"To understand the present we need to explore the past," he said. "In African literature so many stories have been lost, and I think we need to establish the stories of the past have been explored properly to understand the present."
In Babatunde's story, at first, when the army recruiters come to Bombay's town, they are largely ignored. "Shrugging, people just said, the gecko and the lizard may decide to get married, fine for them, but it would be silly for the butterfly to dance its garments to shreds at their wedding celebration." But when "reports came that Hitler himself was waiting with his ruthless army at the border and that with him things were going to be much worse than the imagination could conceive", that "those he didn't pressgang into slavery would be roasted alive for consumption by his beloved dogs ... panic began spreading with virulent haste" and people begin to sign up.
In Burma, Bombay is astonished when the Japanese flee from his inexperienced squad. But he is told: "The stories that preceded you to this war said that the Africans are coming and that they eat people. We fuelled those rumours by dropping leaflets on the enemy, warning them that you will not only kill them but you also will happily cook them for supper. The Japanese, as you very well know, are trained to fight without fear of death. They don't mind being killed but, like anyone else, they are not in any way eager to be eaten."
Babatunde, who lives in Ibadan, Nigeria, has previously had his fiction and poetry published in international journals and anthologies, and his plays staged by institutions including Chicago's Halcyon Theatre and London's Institute of Contemporary Arts. He joins former winners of the Caine prize including Zimbabwean NoViolet Bulawayo, whose debut novel We Need New Names is due out, and Sierra Leonean Olufemi Terry, who won in 2010. The award counts the African Nobel winners Wole Soyinka, Nadine Gordimer and JM Coetzee among its patrons.
