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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.

Julie Aitchison, proprietor of Baobab Books in Long Street, has organised a “fringe” evening for the Cape Town Book Fair, on Saturday 17 June.

(That’s the night of the Sunday Times Book Awards banquet - if you don’t have an invitation, Baobab makes a good alternative.)

Signed copies of various Book Fair books will be on sale in her shop, and the following events have been confirmed:

• 6.30 pm CHRIS MANN: Lifelines, a multi-media presentation of art, graphics, poetry and sung lyrics by the “ad hominem” Professor of Poetry at Rhodes University. (Lifelines’ graphics and scientific commentary by Julia Skeen and Adrian Craig, respectively.)
• 7.45 pm DENNIS BRUTUS: the renowned poet and activist, who is visiting Cape Town for the Book Fair, will launch and discuss the new book about him, Poetry and Protest, edited by Lee Sustar and Aisha Karim.

Julie will lay on complimentary wine for both events, and there will also be a cash bar. She may sponsor another “fringe” event for the next evening, too.

Baobab Books
Baobab Mall
210 Long Street (opp. The Dubliner at Kennedy’s) | Map
+27 (0) 21 422 3894