South African Writer Galgot, Booker Prize Honor After Two Setbacks

[Image source=AP Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Cho Hyun-ui] South African novelist and playwright Damon Galgut has been selected as this year’s Booker Prize winner for his novel The Promise.

According to the New York Times (NYT) and others on the 3rd (local time), Galgut was chosen as the winner among six final nominees. He is the third South African Booker Prize winner, following Nadine Gordimer and J.M. Coetzee.

His ninth book, The Promise, is a novel about a white family from the Netherlands who promised their Black housekeeper their home but ultimately failed to keep that promise. The story is uniquely told in a mosaic style depicting events at four funerals. The NYT explained, "Galgut conceived the book after visiting several funerals in one day and having tea with a friend afterward."

Set in Pretoria, the administrative capital of South Africa where the author grew up, the novel reflects the dark history stained by apartheid and racial violence and its impact on the author’s childhood. Maya Jasanoff, chair of the Booker Prize judges and a Harvard professor, praised it as "a brilliantly structured chronicle of a white family living through apartheid and its aftermath."

Galgut won the Booker Prize on his third attempt. He was previously shortlisted in 2013 and 2010 for The Good Doctor and In a Strange Room, respectively, but did not win. At the award ceremony held in London, Galgut said, "It has taken a very long time to get here. Now that I’m here, I feel like I shouldn’t be in this place." He added, "I accept this award on behalf of stories yet to be told from Africa, writers who have not yet been heard, and Africa itself. Please keep listening to us. There is still much to tell."

The UK’s Booker Prize is considered one of the world’s top three literary awards alongside the Nobel Prize in Literature and the Prix Goncourt. Korean novelist Han Kang won the International Booker Prize in 2016 for The Vegetarian. The winner receives a prize of ?50,000 (about 80 million KRW). Winning the Booker Prize often propels the author’s work to international bestseller status.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.