The winners of the Via Afrika M-Net Literary Awards were announced in Cape Town on the eve of the inaugural Cape Town Book Fair, spotlighting a selection of mostly new writers but also including several well-known South African authors.

The WA Hofmeyr Prize for Afrikaans literature went to Etienne van Heerden for In stede van die liefde. His first novel to appear this decade, it is a gripping tale of dealing in drugs and art, of love, women and ambition. The novelist, who has led a generation of Afrikaans authors to published status and teaches Creative Writing at the University of Cape Town, was praised by the judges for the virtuosity and easy flow of his prose. His novel was chosen above contenders André P. Brink’s Bidsprinkaan and IL de Villiers’s poetry anthology Jerusalem tot Johannesburg.