It’s third time lucky for Damon Galgut as, after being shortlisted in 2003 and 2010, he finally wins the Booker Prize with The Promise.
The announcement was made by Maya Jasanoff, chair of the 2021 judges, in a ceremony that was bro adcast live to a global audience of millions by the BBC.
The Promise is set in South Africa during the country’s transition out of apartheid, explores the interconnected relationships between the members of a diminishing white family through the sequential lens of four funerals.The Promise is Galgut’s ninth novel and first in seven years; his debut was published when he was just seventeen.