SA’s Damon Galgut has won the 2021 Booker Prize for his novel The Promise, which tells the story of a white Afrikaner family navigating personal turmoil against the backdrop of the country’s transition from apartheid to democracy.
Galgut, 57, is the third South African to win the prestigious literary accolade, joining the ranks of Nadine Gordimer and JM Coetzee, both of whom went on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. It was a case of third time lucky for Galgut, who was also shortlisted for the £50,000 (R1.04m) prize in 2003 and 2010.
“It’s taken a long while to get here and now that I have I kind of feel like I shouldn’t be here,” Galgut said upon accepting the award at a ceremony held at the BBC Radio Theatre in London. “This could just as easily have gone to any of the other amazing, talented people on this list and a few others who aren’t. But seeing as the good fortune’s fallen to me, let me say this has been a great year for African writing and I’d like to accept this on behalf of all the stories told and untold, the writers heard and unheard from the remarkable continent that I’m part of.”
Galgut’s 2021 Booker Prize win comes just a month after Tanzania-born writer Abdulrazak Gurnah was awarded this year’s Nobel Prize for literature. Gurnah, who was born in Zanzibar but now resides in the UK, won the Nobel Prize for literature for his works’ ability to reveal the effects of colonialism and the fate of refugees who find themselves stranded between cultures.
The Promise, which is set on a farm outside Pretoria, is Galgut’s ninth novel and his first in seven years. He was shortlisted along with Anuk Arudpragasam (Sri Lanka), Patricia Lockwood (US), Nadifa Mohamed (UK/Somalia), Richard Powers (US) and Maggie Shipstead (US).
The Booker Prize, previously known as the Booker Prize for Fiction (1969 to 2001) and the Man Booker Prize (2002 to 2019), is an annual prize for the best novel written in English. It was previously only open to authors from countries that are or were part of the Commonwealth, but in 2014 it was expanded to include any English-language novel.
Previous SA novels to win the award, which is widely regarded as the English-speaking world’s premiere literary achievement, include Gordimer’s The Conservationist (1974) and Coetzee’s Life & Times of Michael K (1983) as well as his controversial Disgrace (1999).
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