The prize went to The Dressing Station: A Surgeon’s Odyssey by Jonathan Kaplan, published by Picador. The Dressing Station also won the Alan Paton Award in July.
The Book Data/SAPnet Booksellers’ Choice Award goes to the book that “booksellers most enjoyed reading, promoting and selling”, and is worth R50 000. Members of the South African Booksellers’ Association nominate and vote for the books up for the prize.
The concept of Bookeish!, the South African International Festival of Books, was also launched in Cape Town last week. The festival is planned for February/March 2004.
Among the events will be book displays, music and poetry afternoons, book-related films, parades, and library and community events.
Bookeish! hopes “to be a major event on the international calendar of book fairs and writers’ festivals … a chance to network, to catch up on old contacts and to debate new issues in a uniquely African context”.