A gang of young children from a camp pay a marauding visit to a rich neighbourhood…Will the murder of her daughter shake the foundations of Molly’s world?…The death of the village Lothario causes a sexual revolution as husbands try to figure out what he had been giving their wives…A girl abducted by a rebel group years before comes home to pick up the threads of her life…A woman looks back over her long life and wonders how she ended up with her husband’s mistress’s dog…The shortlisted stories for the 2011 Caine Prize – often referred to as the ‘African Booker Prize’ – offer five memorable snapshots of life on the African continent in all its diversity. NoViolet Bulawayo (Zimbabwe) for Hitting Budapest. Tim Keegan (South Africa) for What Molly Knew. Lauri Kubuitsile (Botswana) for In the Spirit of McPhineas Lata. Beatrice Lamwaka (Uganda) for Butterfly Dreams. David Medalie (South Africa) for The Mistress’s Dog. In addition, four of last year’s shortlisted writers – including the 2010 winner, Olufemi Terry – took part with eight other up-and-coming African writers in the Caine Prize Writers’ Workshop, held this year in Cameroon, each producing a special story for this volume. These 17 stories underline yet again the richness and range of current writing on the continent. They underline the primacy of the short story, with its oral antecedents, at the very heart of African literature.