The South African author Damon Galgut is the Booker Prize winner for 2021, taking home the honour for his ninth novel, The Promise. Galgut’s win was revealed overnight at a brief ceremony held with the BBC at Broadcasting House’s Radio Theatre in London, attended by all six of the shortlisted authors, including Patricia Lockwood, Richard Powers and Anuk Arudpragasam.
Damon Galgut
This is the first Booker win for Damon Galgut, having been shortlisted twice before in 2003 and 2010. Set in South Africa during its transition out of apartheid, his novel The Promise follows the decline of the Swarts, a wealthy white family living outside of Pretoria, over four decades of death and misfortune.
It had nothing but high praise from reviewers and Booker judges alike, with 2021 chair of judges Maya Jasanoff saying,
‘The Promise astonished us from the outset as a penetrating and incredibly well-constructed account of a white South African family navigating the end of apartheid and its aftermath. On each reading we felt that the book grew. With an almost deceptive narrative economy, it offers moving insights into generational divides; meditates on what makes a fulfilling life—and how to process death; and explores the capacious metaphorical implications of “promise” in relation to modern South Africa.’
Damon Galgut takes home £50,000 in prize money and a designer-bound edition of his book, in addition to the £2,500 he received as a shortlisted author.
Congratulations to Damon Galgut!
Find out more about the Booker Prizes here
The Promise
A taut and menacing novel that charts the crash and burn of an Afrikaans family, the Swarts. Punctuated by funerals that bring the ever-diminishing family together, each of the four parts opens with a death and a new decade.
The characterisations are razor sharp, the dialogue dramatic, the action gripping. As we traverse the decades, Damon interweaves the story of a disappointed nation from apartheid to Jacob Zuma...
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Olivia Fricot
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