Damon Galgut | |
|---|---|
 Galgut in 2013 | |
| Born | 12 November 1963 Pretoria, South Africa |
| Occupation | |
| Education | Pretoria Boys High School; University of Cape Town |
| Genre | Drama, fiction, short stories |
| Notable works | The Good Doctor (2003) The Promise (2021) |
| Notable awards | Booker Prize (2021) |
Damon Galgut (born 12 November 1963) is a South African novelist and playwright. He was awarded the 2021 Booker Prize for his novel The Promise , having previously been shortlisted for the award in 2003 and 2010. [1]
Galgut was born on 12 November 1963 in Pretoria, South Africa. [1] [2] His father was from a Jewish family and his mother converted to Judaism. [3] [4] At the age of six, he was diagnosed with lymphoma. [5] [6]
Galgut was head boy of Pretoria Boys High School, matriculating in 1981. [7] He then studied drama at the University of Cape Town. [2]
Galgut wrote his first novel, A Sinless Season (1982), when he was 17. [8] His next book, a collection of short stories called Small Circle of Beings (1988), includes an eponymous novella that describes a mother's struggle with her son's illness. [9] [10] His novel The Beautiful Screaming of Pigs (1991) won the Central News Agency Literary Award in 1992. [11] His next novel, The Quarry (1995), was made into a feature film, with a 1998 release. A second feature film version was released in 2020. [12] [13]
After The Good Doctor , his fifth novel, was published in 2003, Galgut's work became better known outside South Africa. [14] The story of two contrasting characters in a remote, rural hospital in post-apartheid South Africa, The Good Doctor was enthusiastically received by critics. [15] It was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2003 [16] and also won the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book: Africa (2003). [2]
His novel In a Strange Room was shortlisted for the 2010 Booker Prize for fiction. [17] Reviewing the novel in The Guardian , Jan Morris wrote, "I doubt if any book in 2010 will contain more memorable evocations of place than In a Strange Room." [18] She described In a Strange Room as a "beautiful" book that is "strikingly conceived and hauntingly written". [18] His 2014 Arctic Summer presents a fictionalized account, “drawn with fidelity to the historical persona of the English novelist”, of the middle years in the life of novelist E. M. Forster, focusing on Forster’s years in India and Alexandria. The novel, “a remarkable, lyrical tribute to the remarkable nature of [Forster’s] understanding as a human being and as an artist”, was short-listed for the Walter Scott Prize. [19]
Galgut's novel The Promise won the 2021 Booker Prize, [20] making him the third writer from South Africa to win the Booker, following Nadine Gordimer and J. M. Coetzee, who has won twice. [21] Galgut says the theme of the book is time. The original idea came from a conversation with a friend, who is the last surviving member of his family, and told Galgut about the funerals he had attended for his mother, father, brother, and sister. [22]
In addition to his novels, Galgut has written several plays. [11] At the time of his Booker win, Galgut was working on a collection of short stories. [23]
Galgut is gay and has stated that this leads him to focus on more male-oriented relationships in his writing. [24] Galgut credits the Roald Dahl short story "Pig" as having had the greatest influence on his writing. [25]
He has lived in Cape Town since the early 1990s. [26] He is a keen traveller and wrote much of The Good Doctor in a hotel in Goa. He describes himself as "obsessed" with yoga, and for some time did not own a car or a television. [27] Galgut has a "fetish around stationery" and writes longhand on notebooks first rather than on a typewriter or computer. After two complete drafts, he then transfers it to the computer. He has used a particular tortoiseshell Parker fountain pen since he was about 20. [6]
| Year | Title | Award | Category | Result | Ref |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2003 | The Good Doctor | Booker Prize | — | Shortlisted | |
| 2004 | Commonwealth Writers Prize | Best Book Award (Africa Region) | Won | [28] | |
| 2005 | International Dublin Literary Award | — | Won | [29] | |
| 2009 | Impostor | Commonwealth Writers Prize | Best Book Award (Africa Region) | Shortlisted | [30] |
| 2010 | In a Strange Room | Booker Prize | — | Shortlisted | [31] |
| 2015 | Arctic Summer | Walter Scott Prize | — | Shortlisted | [32] |
| Barry Ronge Fiction Prize | — | Won | [33] | ||
| 2021 | The Promise | Booker Prize | — | Won | [34] |
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The 2021 Booker Prize for Fiction was announced on 3 November 2021, during a ceremony at the BBC Radio Theatre. The longlist was announced on 27 July 2021. The shortlist was announced on 14 September 2021. The Prize – which was chosen from 158 novels published in the UK or Ireland between 1 October 2020 and 30 September 2021 – was awarded to Damon Galgut for his novel, The Promise, receiving £50,000. Shortlisted twice before, Galgut is the third South African to win the prize, after J. M. Coetzee and Nadine Gordimer.
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The question of how exactly Small Circle of Beings should be positioned in relation to Galgut's late-apartheid context is complicated by its dramatisation of events which so clearly resonate with his own life and his childhood battle with cancer. Indeed, at the level of plot, the novella arguably invites us to apply Galgut's biography as the primary framework for our reading,
