The winning books in The Guyana Prize for Literature 2010 which were announced at the awards ceremony on September 1, make a statement about where Guyanese and Caribbean literature are today. Important developments and facts about the state of the literature are reflected in the shortlists, but may be discerned even when it comes down to the few titles that won the Prizes. In addition to that, they also evoke significant observations about the Guyana Prize itself.
There were three major Guyanese novelists on the Best Fiction shortlist, out of which David Dabydeen emerged as the winner with Molly and the Muslim Stick (London: Macmillan Caribbean, 2008). This fixes Dabydeen in a place that he has been occupying for many years since he rose to become not only a leading Guyanese novelist and poet, but one of the foremost writers and academics in Great Britain. But Dabydeen grew up with the Guyana Prize. While he was already the winner of the Commonwealth Prize with his first book of poetry, Slave Song (1986), he moved into prominence after winning the Guyana Prize in 1992 with his first novel, The Intended (Secker and Warburg, 1992). He beat a small field of very strong writers including former Guyana Prize Winner Jan Lowe Shinebourne and Karen King-Aribisala, who has won the Africa Region of the Commonwealth Writers Prize.
Of Dabydeen’s winning book, the Jury declares: “Molly and the Muslim Stick is a novel that shifts between realism and absurdism. The eponymous English heroine is raised in grim Lancashire of
