Commonwealth Short Story Prize
2020
The 2020 prize winner
‘I’ve experienced every possible emotion ever since I received the news. At times, I’m overwhelmed with joy, gratitude, and a sense of fulfillment or reeling with disbelief. At other times, I’m devastated by the fate of my fictional characters who seem all too real to me, a feeling compounded by the tragedies presently unfolding around us. However, more than anything else, this prize strengthens my will to write. It tells me that all those days when I lock myself in my room to stare into a computer screen, unsettled and unsure, might just be a worthwhile way of engaging with the world. It reminds me that I must, therefore, continue to inquire into the human condition, to make sense of existence, to listen carefully, to resist, and to hope.’
‘The Great India Tee and Snakes is a gut-punch of a story, remarkable because, in spite of its fraught subject matter, it never neglects the beauty of the world in which the story unfolds. Kritika Pandey infuses the tale with empathy and balance, allowing the characters to inhabit themselves fully, while dragging the narrative to its inevitable end. It’s a story that asks important questions about identity, prejudice and nationhood, using metaphors with devastating effect, while still brimming with its author’s revelry in the possibilities of language. Its charged conclusion is all the more shocking given that most of it is set at a tea seller’s stall and its energy derives from a few looks between a boy and a girl. My fellow judges and I loved the story when we first read it, and love it more each time we read it. Congratulations to Kritika!’
‘It is a delight and a privilege to head the agency that is responsible for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize. The Foundation exists to give voice to the 2.3 billion citizens of the Commonwealth and the Prize is central to that goal. The winning story weaves a glorious tapestry out of love and loss: reminding us that human connection is, in the end, the truest measure of a life well-lived.’
Watch the 2020 prize ceremony
Regional winners
We are delighted to announce this year’s Commonwealth Short Story Prize regional winners!
- Caribbean 'Mafootoo' Brian S. Heap (Jamaica)
- Pacific 'The Art of Waving' Andrea E. Macleod (Australia)
- Asia 'The Great Indian Tee and Snakes' Kritika Pandey (India)
- Africa 'When a Woman Renounces Motherhood' Innocent Chizaram Ilo (Nigeria)
- Canada & Europe 'Wherever Mister Jensen Went' Reyah Martin (Scotland)
The 2020 regional winners are: Africa winner Innocent Chizaram Ilo (Nigeria), Canada and Europe winner Reyah Martin (United Kingdom), Caribbean winner Brian S. Heap (Jamaica), and Pacific winner Andrea E. Macleod (Australia).
Commenting on the judging process, Chair of the Judges Nii Ayikwei Parkes said:
‘Picking the overall winner from the five regional winners is always the most difficult part of the judging process, because different judges like different stories. In our quest to convince each other, we exhort our fellow judges to reread a number of stories and that process of re-reading is always precious. In that span of time, we discover each story anew, often falling in love with stories that we didn’t love at first read. It was at this stage that this year’s winning story began to haunt us all. As I promised when we picked the regional winners, this is a story that will move people. I hope you enjoy it.’
In partnership with Commonwealth Writers, the literary magazine Granta publishes online all the regional winners of the 2020 Commonwealth Short Story Prize, including ‘The Great Indian Tee and Snakes.’
We would like to thank all of our partners and all those involved in this year’s Prize – this year’s judging panel, readers, entrants, Paper + Ink and Granta.
A Jamaican woman living in England confronts a crisis late in her life. She uses the occasion to reflect on her life and her marriage.
As a child a woman is told by her older sister not to wave to people. She reflects on how this changed her and the connections she has been both able and unable to make as a result.
‘The Great Indian Tee and Snakes’ tells of an unlikely friendship which reaches across religious divides, set against the background of a tea seller’s stall. She writes of two young people trying to solve an age-old riddle of human existence: how can love overcome the forces of hatred and prejudice?
A woman and her mother bond in the face of a sexist tradition.
‘Wherever Mr Jensen Went’ is a story which explores the power of rumour and hysteria, for better or for worse. This story challenges society, calling for change before it’s too late…
The Shortlist
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'Cash and Carry' , Sharma TaylorJamaica
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'Fatou vs. the Dictator' , ML KejeraThe Gambia
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'Finger, Spinster, Serial Killer' , Brandon Mc IvorTrinidad and Tobago
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'Mafootoo' , Brian S. HeapJamaica
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'Ouroboros, Ouroboros' , Sharmini AphroditeMalaysia
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'Provenance' , Jason JobinCanada
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'Rites Evasion Maneuvers' , Caleb Ozovehe AjinomohNigeria
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'The Art of Waving' , Andrea E. MacleodAustralia
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'The Dawning' , Aba Amissah AsibonGhana
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'The Eternally Obvious is Not Obvious to Me' , Marcia WalkerCanada
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'The Faraway Things' , Alboricah Tokologo RathupetsaneSouth Africa
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'The Great Indian Tee and Snakes' , Kritika PandeyIndia
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'The Shedding' , Nafisa A. IqbalBangladesh
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'The Teeth on the Bus Go Round and Round' , Dinesh DevarajanIndia
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'When a Woman Renounces Motherhood' , Innocent Chizaram IloNigeria
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'Wherever Mister Jensen Went' , Reyah MartinScotland
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'Το χρέος (The Debt) ' , Nikolas KyriacouCyprus
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'A Breath, a Bunk, a Land, a Sky' , Fiona SussmanNew Zealand
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'An Instruction Manual: How to Find Your Vagina' , Maham JavaidPakistan
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'Attention' , Catherine ChidgeyNew Zealand
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Cash and CarrySharma TaylorJamaica
‘Cash and Carry’ is about a Jamaican adolescent girl’s search for identity and acceptance, which ultimately leads her to face the truth about the father she doesn’t know but longs for, her unstable mother, those around her whom she loves and, most importantly, herself.
‘Is the first time I going to Kingston and is ‘cause I going to find my Daddy. I don’t know what my Daddy look like and him don’t know me.
Granny and me squeeze into a jam-packed country bus. The sun hot like it beating you skin with a rubber strap. The whole load of we in a giant cake-tin hotter than Granny’s oven. The old bus creaking and shuddering every time it drop down a pothole.’
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Fatou vs. the DictatorML KejeraThe Gambia
Fatou, a young woman raised in The G’s diaspora, is in an airport awaiting her flight home. She comes across her recently ousted dictator and debates whether she should confront him.
‘He wore a white boubou and blue jeans. Official press releases had given him an ineffable supremacy that reality shattered. Without the propaganda to smoothen him out, he was an ugly man. Wrinkles lined his pitch black face and he carried a globular stomach. But, whenever he shifted in his seat, Fatou saw the sinewy remnants of the 31 year old general—more lean muscle than man—who had overthrown The G’s first democratically elected president.’
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Finger, Spinster, Serial KillerBrandon Mc IvorTrinidad and Tobago
The conversation of two Alphabet City bar-goers twists and turns until it settles in morbid territory: a serial killer from one of their pasts.
‘“How did you lose it?” she asked.
I rubbed my fingers against my glass and turned to face her. It was a cheap bar, but she’d dressed expensive: red satin dress; loud, really well done makeup, a Coach clutch on the counter beside her.
“You know, there are some people who would consider a question like that quite rude,” I said. […]
“Did you think I was quite rude just now?” she asked.
“You’re lucky I didn’t. Actually, it’s a story I quite like telling”.’
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MafootooBrian S. HeapJamaica
A Jamaican woman living in England confronts a crisis late in her life. She uses the occasion to reflect on her life and her marriage.
‘The people at Number 24 are lovely. They’re Jamaican. Which is not unusual in itself given what’s happened to immigration in this country since the War. But they are lovely. They have fitted in so well. On this road at any rate. We did have our concerns at first. But they are very quiet.’
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Ouroboros, OuroborosSharmini AphroditeMalaysia
A young woman goes back to her ancestral village, where – years after the last one was seen – she is terrorised by a tiger.
‘When she saw the tiger the world had been wet with colour. Trembling on the edge of evening, everything either as thick as blood or as delicate as water. Her skin was soft and gleaming from her well bath; walking along the pathway she felt protected, shrouded in a skin stitched with light.’
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ProvenanceJason JobinCanada
Provenance is the story of two friends on the road, one a drifter, the other a living crash test dummy, and they’re being followed.
‘A fine quest. Roar of AC. Shirt long since bonded to the seat- back. Sun so hot it looked to be spinning. Carl sat with his beige polymer left leg hitched up on the dashboard, head to the side, a very teen-girl posture. Whether he even got hot, I wasn’t sure. Carl in loose tan shorts and a billowing Hawaiian shirt of crimson lotus petals. The oversize joints of his fingers looked like vertebrae. He said he didn’t mind when I stared at him. When I gaped or examined. That these things took time and only made sense gradually. That as long I drove him to The City, we were all good.’
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Rites Evasion ManeuversCaleb Ozovehe AjinomohNigeria
Three brothers turn tricks at their father’s funeral.
‘Funerals are expensive, because the living have made dying an industry. Brother One, a grief consultant, knows this better than anyone. In fact, those words can be found on the bottom of the slim leaflets he distributes at Rites Evasion Maneuvers…’
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The Art of WavingAndrea E. MacleodAustralia
As a child a woman is told by her older sister not to wave to people. She reflects on how this changed her and the connections she has been both able and unable to make as a result.
‘I was seven when my sister taught me you did not have to wave at people just because they waved at you. I asked her if she meant like when we were standing in the bank line with our dead mother’s boyfriend. It was just after she had died and the guard sitting at the door winked and waved.’
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The DawningAba Amissah AsibonGhana
A housekeeper works to balance the mourning of her beloved employer with carrying out her domestic duties, the most challenging of which is the nurturing of her dejected madam.
‘The shrine itself is modest, an old coffee table covered in about a yard of scalloped Chantilly lace. On the table sits a thirty-by-twenty-four-inch portrait of Mr Atta wearing his signature pensive expression, flanked by a vase of fresh flowers and a brass holder filled with incense sticks. The shrine is Mansa’s handiwork, a befitting memorial for a good man.’
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The Eternally Obvious is Not Obvious to MeMarcia WalkerCanada
In ‘The Eternally Obvious is Not Obvious to Me’ a woman, unable to cope after the death of her girlfriend, seeks out “Jesus”, an alternative healer, while also tracking down the source of the anonymous graphic sexual texts she repeatedly receives.
‘On the second anniversary of Margot’s death I met Jesus. He was holed up in one of those furnished condos on Bolton Avenue that attract newly divorced dads and low-level executives staying in the city for less than three months. The kind of place where each door has dampeners fixed to its hinges, making them impossible to slam. That alone prevents me from living in a place like that.’
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The Faraway ThingsAlboricah Tokologo RathupetsaneSouth Africa
This story is a journey of life through Lesedi’s eyes, a young boy whose mental limitations have prevented him from accepting a tragic event in his life.
‘Lesedi knew he wasn’t right in the head. He heard someone say it at least once every day. ‘There goes Mokgadi’s son,’ they would always mutter, ‘don’t mind him, he’s not right in the head.’ Not that he understood why his head wasn’t right. Everyone said it, but no one had ever bothered to explain their reasons for thinking it. Although he was sometimes curious about it, he never asked because that would require talking – which he preferred to avoid.’
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The Great Indian Tee and SnakesKritika PandeyIndia
‘The Great Indian Tee and Snakes’ tells of an unlikely friendship which reaches across religious divides, set against the background of a tea seller’s stall. She writes of two young people trying to solve an age-old riddle of human existence: how can love overcome the forces of hatred and prejudice?
‘The girl with the black bindi knows that she is not supposed to glance at the boy in the white skull cap but she does.’
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The SheddingNafisa A. IqbalBangladesh
The saree binds a man to his mother, while prejudice threatens to tear them apart. What will he do when forced to choose between acceptance and family, love and motherland?
‘He lay back in the hot water, thinking of his boyhood summers back home in Dhaka; how on the hottest of days, his mother would freeze the milk jelly hearts of the taal fruit, cut fresh from palm trees in a bucket of ice. When the sun had beat him down to a pulp, he would run back home, dig into the ice and find the cooled taal in his palm like a giant pearl.’
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The Teeth on the Bus Go Round and RoundDinesh DevarajanIndia
A grieving widow and her adolescent son go in search of a pair of lost dentures while being teased by her dead husband.
‘About a week after he died, Appa sauntered towards Amma’s closed second floor window and whistled loudly with his fingers in his mouth. Still whistling he clambered up the ladder, leapt lightly into her dreams and immediately began to do improbable things.’
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When a Woman Renounces MotherhoodInnocent Chizaram IloNigeria
A woman and her mother bond in the face of a sexist tradition.
‘Read this between clenched teeth, a taut smirk plastered on your face. Try to taste each word as if it will escape from your mouth, like air.’
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Wherever Mister Jensen WentReyah MartinScotland
‘Wherever Mr Jensen Went’ is a story which explores the power of rumour and hysteria, for better or for worse. This story challenges society, calling for change before it’s too late…
‘Mister Jensen lives outside of town. He lives where the killin’s happen, the shootin’s an’ all the most mysterious things.’
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Το χρέος (The Debt)Nikolas KyriacouCyprus
Translated from Greek into English by Lina Protopapa (Cyprus).
‘The Debt’ is a story about the agonising effect that enforced disappearance has on human beings, and the impasses facing humanity due to conflict.
‘Σε αυτή τη χώρα, έχουμε όλοι ονόματα πεθαμένων. Αυτόν που χάθηκε και που δεν ξέρουμε πού είναι, πώς θα τον μνημονεύουμε τώρα; Σαν ζωντανό ή σαν νεκρό; Να τον ξεχάσουμε ή να τον καρτερούμε; Κανένας μας δεν είναι από μόνος του φτιαγμένος. Μόνο απ’ των προγόνων του τα ιερά οστά κι απ’ του Θεού τη χάρη είναι πλασμένος.
Απέτυχα. Έχασα τον άνθρωπο μέσα από χέρια μου, η ατολμία και η δειλία μού έπνιξαν τη φωνή, παρέλυσαν την κάθε πράξη.’
‘In this country, our names are dead people’s names. But what of the one who has gone missing? How will we refer to him? As a living person or as a dead person? Should we forget him or wait for him? None of us creates his own self. We are all created out of the holy bones of our ancestors and by God’s grace.
I failed. I let the man slip through my hands, pusillanimity and cowardice drowned my voice, they paralysed my every move.’
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A Breath, a Bunk, a Land, a SkyFiona SussmanNew Zealand
A young Syrian asylum seeker navigates a new life in Aotearoa, New Zealand.
‘I stop. Look up. This sky is crammed with clouds and a taunt of blue.
I steal a breath. It carries the weight of water and smells of rain. Rain.
‘Thank you for flying with us.’
The woman is like Hollywood. I do not know what to do with her smile.
I climb down the stairs. Yellow lights flash. Trucks beep. A man in a fluorescent jacket waves small round bats in the air. Planes wait in line like obedient dogs.’
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An Instruction Manual: How to Find Your VaginaMaham JavaidPakistan
Self help books typically instruct readers how to improve their lives. This short story turns that concept on its head as it attempts to walk readers through a life that is unravelling.
‘Allow yourself to feel overwhelmed. You could release yourself from the stirrups, thank everyone in the room, grab your sweatshirt from the thermometer-shaped hook behind the door and go to school. If you left now, you’d be just in time for Media Law. You could also go to the apartment you share with your Colombian classmate, borrow the mirror she uses to pop zits, place it between your legs and search for the truth.’
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AttentionCatherine ChidgeyNew Zealand
Aaron’s career as a child star is cut short when he takes on his most challenging role – one that will never quite leave him.
‘I was on the news again – the first time in more than a decade. My girlfriend and I were eating dinner on our laps (macaroni cheese from the freezer; we’d left the honeymoon phase far behind) and there I was, the lead story. The footage was twenty-six years old and Jacinta did not recognise me.’
This year’s judging panel
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Photo by Elikem Akpalu
Nii Ayikwei Parkes
ChairNii Ayikwei Parkes is a Ghanaian writer and editor who has won acclaim as a children’s author, poet, broadcaster and novelist. Winner of multiple international awards including Ghana’s ACRAG award, his novel Tail of the Blue Bird won France’s two major prizes for translated fiction – Prix Baudelaire and Prix Laure Bataillon – in 2014. He was the founding director of the Aidoo Centre for Creative Writing in Accra and is the founder of flipped eye publishing, a leading small press. Nii Ayikwei serves on the boards of World Literature Today and the Caine Prize, and is the current Producer of Literature and Talks at Brighton Festival.
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Mohale Mashigo
Judge, African RegionMohale Mashigo is the author of the widely acclaimed and best-selling novel, The Yearning, which won the University of Johannesburg 2016 Debut Prize for South African Writing in English. Her latest offering is Intruders: a collection of (speculative fiction) short stories that explore how it feels not to belong. Mashigo is also a comic book writer and an award-winning singer, songwriter.
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William Phuan
Judge, Asian RegionWilliam Phuan is the Executive Director of the Singapore Book Council, a nonprofit dedicated to developing and promoting Singapore’s books and writers. Established in 1968, the Book Council organises literary festivals, workshops and talks, and gives out book awards. William was formerly the director of The Arts House, and Programme Director of the New York Asian American International Film Festival. He also lectures part-time on arts management.
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Heather O’Neill
Judge, Canada and Europe RegionHeather O’Neill is a novelist, short story writer, and essayist. Her work, which includes Lullabies for Little Criminals, The Girl Who Was Saturday Night and Daydreams of Angels, has been shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award for Fiction, The Orange Prize for Fiction and the Scotiabank Giller Prize in two consecutive years, and has won CBC Canada Reads, The Paragraphe MacLennan Prize for Fiction and the Danuta Gleed Award. Her latest novel The Lonely Hearts Hotel, which was long listed for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, was published in February 2017. Born and Raised in Montreal, O’Neill lives there today.
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Elizabeth Walcott-Hackshaw
Judge, Carribean RegionElizabeth Walcott-Hackshaw was born in Trinidad and is professor of French literature and creative writing at the University of the West Indies. She has co-edited several works, including Border Crossings: A Trilingual Anthology of Caribbean Women Writers; Methods in Caribbean Research: Literature, Discourse, Culture; Echoes of the Haitian Revolution 1804-2004; and Reinterpreting the Haitian Revolution and its Cultural Aftershocks. Apart from her scholarly essays and articles, she has also published creative works. Four Taxis Facing North, her first collection of short stories, was considered one of the best works of 2007 by the Caribbean Review of Books. Her first novel, Mrs. B, was short listed for ‘Best Book of Fiction’ in the Guyana Prize for Literature in 2014. Her short stories have been widely translated and anthologised.
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Nic Low
Judge, Pacific RegionNic Low is a writer and arts organiser of Ngāi Tahu Māori and European descent, born in Christchurch and now Melbourne-based. He’s published widely on wilderness, technology, history and race, kick-started by a shortlisting in the 2012 Commonwealth Short Story Prize. His first book, Arms Race, was shortlisted for the Readings Prize and Queensland Literary Awards. Nic is also a former director of the National Young Writers Festival, curatorial adviser to the Melbourne Writers’ Festival, and manager of the International Writing Program at the University of Melbourne’s Asialink Institute, devising literary collaborations such as Bookwallah, a roving festival which crossed India and Australia by train. He’s currently vice-chair of the Ngāi Tahu ki Victoria taurahere, organising culture programs for Melbourne members of his tribe, and finishing his second book, a Māori history of New Zealand’s Southern Alps told through walking journeys, out with Text Publishing next year.
Frequently asked questions
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The prize is open to all Commonwealth citizens aged 18 and over – please see the full list of Commonwealth countries here.
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The regional winners receive £2,500 and the overall winner receives a total of £5,000. The winning stories are published online by Granta and in a special print collection by Paper + Ink. The shortlisted stories are published in adda, the online literary magazine of the Commonwealth Foundation.
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The story must be between 2,000 and 5,000 words.
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The prize is only open to short fiction, but it can be in any fiction genre–science fiction, speculative fiction, historical fiction, crime, romance, literary fiction–and you may write about any subject you wish.
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Submissions are accepted in Bengali, Chinese, Creole, English, French, Greek, Malay, Maltese, Portuguese, Samoan, Swahili, Tamil, and Turkish. Stories that have been translated into English from any language are also accepted and the translator of any winning story receives additional prize money.
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Your submission must be unpublished in any print or online publication, with the exception of personal websites.
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Entries are initially assessed by a team of readers and a longlist of 200 entries is put before the international judging panel, comprising a chair and five judges, one from each of the Commonwealth regions – Africa, Asia, Canada and Europe, the Caribbean, and the Pacific. All judges read entries from all regions.
Entries in other languages are assessed by relevant language readers and the best submissions are selected for translation into English to be considered for inclusion on the longlist.
The judging panel select a shortlist of around twenty stories, from which five regional winners are chosen, one of which is chosen as the overall winner.
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