Ugandan writer, Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi, came in first for the Commonwealth short story prize for Let’s Tell This Story Properly; a story, which she says, is one of immigration. The piece, in which “a Ugandan woman, Nnam, living in Manchester, finds her husband has ‘died in the bathroom with his pants down.
He was 45 years old and should have pulled up his pants before he collapsed. The more shame because it was Easter. Who dies naked on Easter?’ She travels back to Uganda for his funeral, to discover a web of deception”, was praised by judges for its “risk-taking, grace breadth”.
The prize, which was intended to discover new voices from the countries of the Commonwealth, it said to have drawn nearly 4,000 previously unpublished entries.