NoViolet Bulawayo has been awarded the 2025 Best of Caine Award for her short story, Hitting Budapest, which originally won the Prize in 2011. The short story was also later developed by the writer into the Booker Prize shortlisted novel We Need New Names.
In celebration of the Caine Prize’s 25th anniversary, the Best of Caine Award is an honorary prize celebrating the most outstanding winning story from the Prize’s 25 year history. The Caine Prize for African Writing is one of Africa's most important literary awards. It's main aim is to bring African writing to a wider audience through the spotlight of the annual literary award.
In addition to administering the Prize, the organisation works to connect readers with African writers through a series of public events, as well as helping emerging writers in Africa to enter the world of mainstream publishing through the annual Caine Prize writers’ workshop which takes place in a different African country each year.
“I wish to thank the Caine Prize and the judging panel for this incredible honor. Winning the Caine Prize as an unpublished writer back in 2011 was truly the kind of defining highlight to jumpstart a career," shared NoViolet Bulawayo in an interview with The Journal of African Youth Literature.
"It brought my work to a global audience, affirmed my literary path, and strengthened my confidence and commitment to writing so that finishing a first novel worthy of the recognition bestowed on me by Africa’s most prestigious literary award – my first ever recognition – was non-negotiable. Now, receiving the Best of Caine Award these many years later feels like a moment to reflect on the journey."
This year’s judging panel, comprised of Nobel Laureate Prof. Abdulrazak Gurnah (Chair); award-winning author Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi; and critically acclaimed film producer Tony Tagoe.
NoViolet Bulawayo haa authored the novels Glory, and We Need New Names. Her books have been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and longlisted for the Women’s Prize, the Aspen Words Literary Prize, the Rathbones Folio Prize, and won the Pen/Hemingway Award, the LA Times Book Prize Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, among others. NoViolet earned her MFA at Cornell University, where she currently teaches.
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