Henrietta Rose-Innes wins Caine prize

South African writer Henrietta Rose-Innes has won this year's £10,000 Caine prize for the best short story in English by an African writer for her compelling work, Poison.

Poison is a haunting account of the "new" South Africa and it has already won the 2007 South African PEN Literary Award.

Jude Kelly, the Southbank Centre's artistic director and chair of this year's judges, praised Rose-Innes for "a rare maturity and a poetic intelligence that is both subtle and deeply effective. It is writing of the highest order".

Rose-Innes, who is the author of two novels, Shark's Egg (2000) and The Rocket Alphabet (2004), was presented with the award at a ceremony at Oxford University's Bodleian Library, the Guardian reports.

She said that she hoped the prize would help her work to attract more international attention, adding: "This will allow me to do nothing but write for the next two years."

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