Story of love against the odds wins 'African Booker' for Ugandan

A love story by a woman from one of the most violent regions of Africa has won a £10,000 literary prize. Monica Arac de Nyeko, who was announced last night as this year's winner of the Caine Prize, is from northern Uganda, where civil war has dragged on for two decades.

Her story Jambula Tree appeared in anthology published last year, entitled African Love Stories. The Sudanese novelist Jamal Mahjoub, who chaired the panel of judges, described it as "a witty and touching portrait of a community which is affected forever by a love which blossoms between adolescents".

Nyeko herself describes it as "about loving against a very strong tide - society".

The author is from the Kitgum district of Northern Uganda, where she grew up against a background of constant armed conflict involving rebel groups such as the Lord's Resistance Army. About 1.6 million people have had to flee their homes in the region in the past 20 years.

"It's just one of those things that you have to deal with because it is there; and there are no short cuts as to how it affects you, home, the people you love, their histories, the future and your collective memory," she said.

"My writing is shaped by these battles which are my own, yet my anger and my quests are all so tied to my identify, history, my memory of many things, but especially of home the way it was and is with the war, the poverty.

"I question, I challenge, sometimes I rant, and shout and demand to be heard, because in this space where so many things seem to be going wrong, I feel I have as much right to poke at people's thoughts."

The award follows a run of success for black African writers. Last month, the £30,000 Orange Broadband prize was awarded to 29-year-old Nigerian Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, for her novel Half of a Yellow Sun, an epic set in the Biafran war. In the same month, one of the first great African novels Things Fall Apart by the Nigerian writer, Chinua Achebe, first published in 1958, belatedly won the Man Booker International Prize.

This is the second time Ms Nyeko has been nominated for the Caine Prize. She also won first prize in the Women's World Voices in War Zones for her essay In the Stars. Her story Strange Fruit was shortlisted three years ago. Its title was taken from a song by Billie Holiday about lynching in the southern US.

The Caine Prize is named after the late Sir Michael Caine, who headed the Booker Prize committee for nearly 25 years. It is awarded annually for a short story of 3,000 to 10,000 words by an African writer published in English.