Addis Ababa, July 27, 2021 (FBC) – Meron Hadero has become the first Ethiopian author to win the prestigious AKO Caine Prize for African Writing.
“I’m absolutely thrilled, I’m in shock – being shortlisted in itself was a huge honour,” she told the BBC.
Her winning short story is about an Ethiopian boy called Getu, who has to navigate the fraught power dynamics of NGOs and foreign aid in Addis Ababa.
It impressed the judges who found it “utterly without self-pity” and said it “turns the lens” on the usual clichés. Hadero will take home 13,000 USD in prize money.
The author was born in Ethiopia and raised in the US by parents who are both medical doctors. Her sister is the singer Meklit Hadero, whose support was “absolutely essential” to her success, Hadero says.