South African author Mary Watson has won the $15,000 (£8,000) Caine Prize for African Writing, one of the continent’s leading literary awards.Her short story, Jungfrau, looks at apartheid through the eyes of a child.

Judges said the tale, which forms part of a collection the author wrote for her master’s thesis at Cape Town University, was “powerfully written”.

Watson was shortlisted along with writers from Nigeria, Kenya, Morocco and South Africa for the prize.

‘African Booker’

She is currently lecturing Film Studies at the University of Cape Town, and is working on her first full novel.

Watson is the seventh winner of the Caine Prize, which is often called the “African Booker”.

It is named after Sir Michael Caine, the British businessman who chaired the British literary prize for almost 25 years.

The prize can be awarded to an African writer who has been published on the continent or elsewhere.