SOUTH AFRICA: Harry Potter fans in Cape Town have poured into book shops at a local mall as the seventh and final volume in the series went on sale

The wait was finally over for Harry Potter fans Saturday who flooded to a bookshop in Cape Town to grab the final book in the bewitching series to see whether author J.K. Rowling slays or spares the boy wizard. After months of hype and hearsay, "Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows", the seventh volume in a decade-long saga on the bespectacled orphan's adventures, went on sale at 01h01 local time in South Africa and 2301 GMT in most countries internationally, with London the focus of festivities. Dressed up as characters from the book, Potter-buffs mingled amongst local fans who attended an official ceremony to launch the book. "It's actually quite remarkable that I don't know, that he whole world reads it and it's part of everybody's lives and it's reached people from everywhere and I think that it's a global phenomenon", said Thomas Fletcher, a local fan. Fans are itching to discover which of the book's characters die--Rowling has announced the demise of two, both unnamed. With 325 million copies of the first six volumes sold worldwide, and translations into 64 languages, Potter-mania was rife across the globe. Rowling, who wrote the first Potter book as a single mother receiving state benefits, has made an estimated one billion dollars from the works and is now richer than Queen Elizabeth II.

ITN Source | July 25, 2007

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