Published: 06:02 AM, 04 November 2021
'Tour de force' novel wins Booker Prize
South African author Damon Galgut has won the prestigious Booker Prize for fiction at the third attempt for his novel The Promise.
Galgut, who was previously nominated in 2003 and 2010, picked up the £50,000 prize at a ceremony on Wednesday.
The Promise is his ninth novel and follows the decline of one South African family over four decades from the apartheid era to the present day.
The chair of the judges, Maya Jasanoff, described it as "a tour de force".
"It combines an extraordinary story, rich themes and the history of the last 40 years of South Africa in an incredibly well-wrought package," she said.
"It manages to pull together the qualities of great storytelling, it has great ideas, it's a book that has a lot to chew on, with remarkable attention to structure and literary style."
The title, The Promise, refers to a pledge that the white family's black maid would be given the house she inhabits and the land it stands on.
The Promise begins in 1986 and revisits the family over the course of four funerals, each in a different decade and at a different point in the nation's journey.
"What really appealed to me is how you could show in each little snapshot how the same cast of characters is changing as time goes by," the author told BBC Radio 4's Open Book earlier this year.
Galgut, 57, grew up in Pretoria and told BBC World Service's The Cultural Frontline that the title also refers to the unfulfilled promise in South Africa after apartheid, the policy of racial segregation and discrimination enforced by the white minority government.
"I think a great many of us had high expectations of the future," Galgut said. "And I think also a great many of us feel that those hopes have been dashed. That little piece of land is only one wasted promise, really."
The Promise was widely praised when it was published in the UK in June, with The Guardian calling it "stunning", The Sunday Times describing it as "bleak but superbly narrated" and The Financial Times declaring it "a complex, ambitious, brilliant work".
The other nominated books were:
Anuk Arudpragasam - A Passage North
Patricia Lockwood - No One Is Talking About This
Nadifa Mohamed - The Fortune Men
Richard Powers - Bewilderment
Maggie Shipstead - Great Circle
