Acclaimed Ugandan born novelist and short story writer, Jennifer Makumbi best known for her novel ‘Kintu’ has won a prestigious literary prize from Yale University in the U.S.
Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi is among eight writers who have this year been recognized with the one of the Windham Campbell Prizes from Yale and will receive USD 165,000 (Shs 594 million).
The Manchester based writer told the BBC that the prize was unbelievable.
“I haven’t been earning for a long, long time. I really put everything into writing. So for this to happen is unbelievable,” Makumbi is quoted by the BBC to have said.
The cash prize is considered the richest award dedicated to literature after the Nobel Prize.
The other recipients are; SarahBakewell (UK) for non fiction, Lorna Goodison (Canada/Jamaica) for poetry, Lucas Hnath (U.S) for drama, Cathy Park Hong (U.S) for poetry, John Keene (U.S) for fiction, Olivia Laing (UK) for nonfiction and Suzan-Lori Parks (U.S) for drama.
“This prize for me is like having been working without pay for a long time and then someone comes a long and says, ‘Will a salary for the past ten years do?’ Then you’re left speechless,” Makumbi is quoted on the Windham Campbell website.
Makumbi’s novel ‘Kintu’ is a story picked from 1950s Uganda based on Kintu Kidda, Ppookino, a Muganda who sets out on a journey to Kampala where he is to pledge allegiance to the new kabaka of the realm.
The novel explores the power of a curse in African society as wekk as the ideas of transgression, curse and perpetuity, looking back at the history of Buganda Kingdom while tracing the birth of modern Uganda.
The English novel was published in 2014 in Kenya after English publishers refused to publish it for being too African, until the January when they finally embraced it in the UK.
Makumbi adds in her interview with BBC that “I had really locked Europe out. But it was a little bit too much – the language, the way I wrote it [Kintu] – they [Brits] were not used to that kind of writing. But they are beginning now to open up I think.
“Readers are realising, OK, if I want to explore Africa I’d rather be told from an African point of view rather than being told things that I’m expected to want to know,” she adds.
She says that with the Shs 594 million prize money, she can now go and do research in different countries for her next project.
Makumbi has a PhD in African Literature from Lancaster University, and has taught creative writing at colleges and universities around the United Kingdom. Her collection of short stories, Love Made in Manchester, is forthcoming from Transit Books in January 2019.