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BC 2003 is a book club that would find much favor with Emily and Florence of Little Britain, for it is entirely composed of ladies. I was privileged enough to join their beau monde last evening, where a supper of spicy tomato soup was slurped up (delicious, Claudia - thank you), a few pages of The New Suffolk Hymnbook were read, and outrage over the absolutism of “C-Section only” gynaes was expressed.

The club is run like a stokvel: each member contributes R50/month to the pot, and the monthly sum then rotates among them, giving each the chance to buy five or six books she’s had an eye on, and simultaneously build up the club’s library (which travels from meeting to meeting, via car boot, in cardboard boxes). I was happy to see a few new local titles in the mix, including K. Sello Duiker’s The Hidden Star and Coldsleep Lullaby by Andrew Brown. On behalf of writers in South Africa, thanks for the support, BC 2003 - may other clubs follow your lead.

BC 2003

South Africa is known as a land of compromises - and last night the judges of the Sunday Times Book Awards did the country’s reputation awkward justice, by failing to pick a clear winner in the non-fiction category. Edwin Cameron and Adam Levin shared the spoils, for their books Witness to AIDS and AidSafari, respectively.

The fiction award went to Andrew Brown, for his Coldsleep Lullaby. I haven’t yet read any of the winners - had had high hopes, in fact, for Russel Brownlee’s novel, Garden of the Plagues, in the fiction category.

I confess to being irked at hung juries, because a jury that can’t make up its mind is ultimately a selfish one - it wants to draw attention to itself. I’m probably not half so irked, however, as Cameron and Levin, who are now each possessed of half an award, and burdened by the necessity of being gracious to each other in public. This is not to say that they were not fast friends to begin with, just that it’s unpleasant to share the limelight, and to know that it was a genre - reportage from the HIV/AIDS front - more than any particular effort of theirs, that got the prize.

• Official coverage: Sunday Times | Sunday Times Book Awards

Edwin Cameron
…at the Cape Town Book Fair.