An international judging panel, meeting in South Africa, has awarded the 2004 Commonwealth Writers Prize Best Book Award, Africa Region to Damon Galgut’s The Good Doctor. The Best First Book Award was awarded to Diane Awerbuck’s Gardening at Night. Each wins £1,000.

The Africa Panel of the Commonwealth Writers Prize considered fiction written in English from Nigeria, Ghana, Botswana, Tanzania and South Africa.

The Good Doctor and Gardening at Night are now carried forward to the final stage of the Commonwealth Writers Prize, which will be decided in Melbourne, Australia in May 2004. They join books in each category, selected by the three other international juries, covering Canada and the Caribbean; Eurasia; and South East Asia and the South Pacific.

An amount of £10,000 will then be awarded to the Overall Best Book, and £3,000 to the Best First Book.