Cover Stories: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince; Caine Prize for short stories; Michael Fishwick moves to Bloomsbury

The Literator

In the sandstorm of Africa coverage, don't lose sight of the unique Caine Prize for short stories by African writers - worth a serious $15,000, and open to electronic as well as print media. This year's winner, announced at the Bodleian in Oxford on Monday, is S A Afolabi from Nigeria for his story "Monday Morning", which first appeared in Wasafiri magazine. Afolabi, a Cardiff graduate who has worked for the BBC, will publish a collection of stories with Cape next year and a novel in 2007.

No sooner had Caroline Michel bid farewell to HarperCollins, her parting gift a Matisse lithograph, than Michael Fishwick, the firm's head of non-fiction, announced he is leaving to be publishing director at Bloomsbury. Fishwick recently marked 20 years with HC; his authors have included Gorbachev and Major, Amanda Foreman and John Walsh. His move will be a loss to HarperCollins, though it allows the able Arabella Pike to advance.