SHORT TAKES : South African Wins Book Prize

LONDON —  J. M. Coetzee, whose novel “Age of Iron” takes the form of a white South African widow’s letter to her daughter in America, has won Britain’s richest fiction prize.

South African actress Janet Suzman picked up the $39,000 Sunday Express Book of the Year award on Coetzee’s behalf Monday at a literary luncheon.

“Age of Iron” is the South African author’s first book in four years. Coetzee won acclaim for his earlier novels “Waiting for the Barbarians” and “Life and Times of Michael K.”

The Sunday Express newspaper presents its award annually for “the most enjoyable and compulsively readable book published in Britain.”

The book’s monologues reflect a woman’s guilt over apartheid--a “gathering feeling of walking over black faces”--and her efforts to be a mother figure to those around her.