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]
Early life and education
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 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]
Personal life
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
Parkerfountain pen since he was about 20.[6]
^Lenta, Margaret (14 September 2007). "Jewish writers and postcolonial choices in South Africa". In Stähler, Axel (ed.). Anglophone Jewish Literature.
Routledge. p. 171.
doi:
10.4324/9780203939222.
ISBN978-1-134-12142-7.
^Kostelac, Sofia (3 July 2015). "The Singularity of Damon Galgut's Small Circle of Beings". Journal of Literary Studies. 31 (3): 73.
doi:
10.1080/02564718.2015.1083173.
ISSN0256-4718.
S2CID147278190. 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,
^Teems, Scott (17 April 2020),
The Quarry (Crime, Mystery, Thriller), Prowess Pictures, Grindstone Entertainment Group, Metalwork Pictures,
archived from the original on 13 October 2021, retrieved 4 November 2021
^Pauli, Michelle (9 March 2005).
"Final ten braced for Impac". The Guardian.
Archived from the original on 22 September 2015. Retrieved 4 November 2021.