I was back in a hospital bed, with a doctor sitting beside me. 'Try to describe how you feel,' he said. 'I feel dislocated,' I told him. 'Not part of life.' 'Whose life?' 'Mine. Everybody's. Life.' And the familiar sensation started up in my belly, the shaking spread into my arms. I covered my face with my hands, but I couldn't block out what I saw.' A year ago Patrick Winter, a young South African, was sent to Namibia to complete his military service and to defend his country against 'terrorism'. Now he is back, to meet Godfrey, his mother's freedom fighter boyfriend, and to witness the country's first free elections. But Patrick needs to confront and process much more than a country in transition, and in doing so he is forced to revisit his past and to face the pain and the demons that haunt him.
WINNER OF THE 2021 BOOKER PRIZE A NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS' CHOICE On her deathbed, Rachel Swart makes a promise to Salome, the family's Black maid. This promise will divide the family--especially her children: Anton, the golden boy; Astrid, whose beauty is her power; and the youngest, Amor, whose life is shaped by feelings of guilt. Reunited by four funerals over thirty years, the dwindling Swart family remains haunted by the unmet promise, just as their country is haunted by its own failures. The Promise is an epic South African drama that unfurls against the unrelenting march of history, sure to leave its readers transformed. "Simply: you must read it."--Claire Messud, Harper's Magazine ★ "This tour-de-force unleashes a searing portrait of a damaged family and a troubled country in need of healing."--Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
“A lovely, lethal, disturbing novel” of the dashed hopes of post-apartheid South Africa and the small betrayals that doom a friendship (The Guardian). An extraordinary parable of the corruption of the flesh and spirit, The Good Doctor has inspired enthusiastic interest around the world and has assured Damon Galgut’s place as a major international talent. When Laurence Waters arrives at his new post at a deserted rural hospital, staff physician Frank Eloff is instantly suspicious. Laurence is everything Frank is not—young, optimistic, and full of big ideas. The whole town is beset with new arrivals and the return of old faces. Frank reestablishes a liaison with a woman, one that will have unexpected consequences. A self-made dictator from apartheid days is rumored to be active in cross-border smuggling, and a group of soldiers has moved in to track him, led by a man from Frank’s own dark past. Laurence sees only possibilities—but in a world where the past is demanding restitution from the present, his ill-starred idealism cannot last. “Galgut’s prose, its gentle rhythms and straightforward sentences edging toward revelation, is utterly seductive and suspenseful . . . Galgut is a master of psychological tension. . . . Tragic and brilliant.” —The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
An “unsettling and engaging” novel about contemporary South Africa, from the Man Booker Prize–winning author of The Promise (The Telegraph). Adam Napier leaves Johannesburg looking for a fresh start. Jobless and directionless, but with a head full of literary ambitions, he moves into his brother’s dilapidated house on the edge of a backwater town. One day he encounters Canning, a man who claims Adam saved his life in their school days. Adam does not remember him at all. But he plays along and, for a time, enjoys all that Canning has: a vast fortune and game preserve inherited from his father, and a beautiful, mysterious younger wife to whom Adam is compulsively, dangerously drawn. “An antipastoral, post-apartheid noir” (Publishers Weekly) by “a worthy heir to Gordimer and Coetzee”, The Imposter evokes a glittering world of the moneyed old guard, newly empowered black Africans, and the betrayal and obsessions hiding in the shadows of the new South African dream (The Guardian, UK).
Damon Galgut stepped prominently onto the international stage with the publication of The Good Doctor He has been compared to J.M. Coetzee, Graham Greene, and Joseph Conrad, but his voice is truly his own. .The Quarry written ten years ago but never before published outside South Africa, is a stark, intense, and crystalline novel in which human nature is set against the desolate backdrop of rural South Africa. On a lonely stretch of road a man picks up a hitchhiker. The driver is a minister on his way to a new congregation in an isolated village and the passenger is a nameless fugitive from justice. When the minister realizes this, and confronts his passenger as they are overlooking an empty quarry, the fugitive kills him and assumes his vestments and identity, only to discover that one of his first duties as the new minister is to bury the body of his victim. Despite hints that two local petty criminals may be responsible, the local police chief is watching the new minister, and as the two play a tense game of cat and mouse,culminating in a desperate pursuit across the veldt, Damon Galgut gives us a spare, devastating combat for man’s most prized attribute: freedom.,
For readers of Ian McEwan, Paul Auster, and J.M. Coetzee, In a Strange Room is the intricate, psychologically intense, and deeply personal book of fiction from the internationally acclaimed, Booker Prize-shortlisted author of The Good Doctor. A young man named Damon takes three journeys, through Greece, India, and Africa. To those who travel with him and those whom he meets on the way—including a handsome enigmatic stranger, a group of careless backpackers, and a woman on the edge—he is the Follower, the Lover, and the Guardian. Yet, despite the man's best intentions, each journey ends in disaster. Together, these three journeys will change his whole life. A book of longing and thwarted desire, rage and compassion, In a Strange Room is the hauntingly beautiful evocation of one man's search for love and a place to call home.
This “beautifully written and utterly compelling” novel by the acclaimed South African author traces E. M. Forester’s journey of self-discovery (The Times, London). The year is 1912, and the SS Birmingham is approaching India. On board is Edward Morgan Forster, a reserved man taunted by writer’s block, attempting to come to terms with his art and his homosexuality. During his travels, the novelist confronts his fraught childhood and falls in unrequited love with his closest friend. He also finds himself surprisingly freed to explore his “minorite” desires as secretary to a most unusual Maharajah. Slowly, the strands of a story begin to gather in Forster’s mind: a sense of impending menace, lust in close confines, under a hot, empty sky. But it will be another twelve years and a second stay in India before the publication of his finest work, A Passage to India. Shifting across the landscapes of India, Egypt, and England, Forster’s life is informed by his relationships—from the Egyptian tram conductor Mohammed el-Adl, to the Greek poet and literary titan C. P. Cavafy. Damon Galgut’s reimagining of Forster’s life is a clear and sympathetic psychological probing of one of Britain’s finest novelists. “Galgut inhabits [Forster] with such sympathetic completeness, and in prose of such modest excellence that he starts to breathe on the page.” —Financial Times
Damon Galgut's masterful novel of longing and thwarted desire following one man on three very different journeys. A young man takes three journeys, through Greece, India and Africa. He travels with little purpose, letting the chance encounters of the road dictate his path. But although he knows that he is drifting, he is unable to settle. It is as if, without these encounters, the person he is cannot exist. And yet each journey ends in disaster. A novel of longing and thwarted desire, rage and compassion, In a Strange Room is an extraordinary evocation of one man's search for love, and a place to call home.
On a lonely stretch of road, a nameless man commits a murder. The victim is a religious minister on his way to take up a post in a nearby town. The murderer decides to steal the dead man's identity only to discover that one of his first duties is to bury a body that has just been found close to a disused quarry...
An “unsettling and engaging” novel about contemporary South Africa, from the Man Booker Prize–winning author of The Promise (The Telegraph). Adam Napier leaves Johannesburg looking for a fresh start. Jobless and directionless, but with a head full of literary ambitions, he moves into his brother’s dilapidated house on the edge of a backwater town. One day he encounters Canning, a man who claims Adam saved his life in their school days. Adam does not remember him at all. But he plays along and, for a time, enjoys all that Canning has: a vast fortune and game preserve inherited from his father, and a beautiful, mysterious younger wife to whom Adam is compulsively, dangerously drawn. “An antipastoral, post-apartheid noir” (Publishers Weekly) by “a worthy heir to Gordimer and Coetzee”, The Imposter evokes a glittering world of the moneyed old guard, newly empowered black Africans, and the betrayal and obsessions hiding in the shadows of the new South African dream (The Guardian, UK).
This “beautifully written and utterly compelling” novel by the acclaimed South African author traces E. M. Forester’s journey of self-discovery (The Times, London). The year is 1912, and the SS Birmingham is approaching India. On board is Edward Morgan Forster, a reserved man taunted by writer’s block, attempting to come to terms with his art and his homosexuality. During his travels, the novelist confronts his fraught childhood and falls in unrequited love with his closest friend. He also finds himself surprisingly freed to explore his “minorite” desires as secretary to a most unusual Maharajah. Slowly, the strands of a story begin to gather in Forster’s mind: a sense of impending menace, lust in close confines, under a hot, empty sky. But it will be another twelve years and a second stay in India before the publication of his finest work, A Passage to India. Shifting across the landscapes of India, Egypt, and England, Forster’s life is informed by his relationships—from the Egyptian tram conductor Mohammed el-Adl, to the Greek poet and literary titan C. P. Cavafy. Damon Galgut’s reimagining of Forster’s life is a clear and sympathetic psychological probing of one of Britain’s finest novelists. “Galgut inhabits [Forster] with such sympathetic completeness, and in prose of such modest excellence that he starts to breathe on the page.” —Financial Times
For readers of Ian McEwan, Paul Auster, and J.M. Coetzee, In a Strange Room is the intricate, psychologically intense, and deeply personal book of fiction from the internationally acclaimed, Booker Prize-shortlisted author of The Good Doctor. A young man named Damon takes three journeys, through Greece, India, and Africa. To those who travel with him and those whom he meets on the way—including a handsome enigmatic stranger, a group of careless backpackers, and a woman on the edge—he is the Follower, the Lover, and the Guardian. Yet, despite the man's best intentions, each journey ends in disaster. Together, these three journeys will change his whole life. A book of longing and thwarted desire, rage and compassion, In a Strange Room is the hauntingly beautiful evocation of one man's search for love and a place to call home.
The Quarry," written ten years ago but never published outside of South Africa, is a stark, intense, and crystalline novel in which human nature betrays itself against the desolate backdrop of rural South Africa.
WINNER OF THE 2021 BOOKER PRIZE A NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE A modern family saga written in gorgeous prose by three-time Booker Prize-shortlisted author Damon Galgut. Haunted by an unmet promise, the Swart family loses touch after the death of their matriarch. Adrift, the lives of the three siblings move separately through the uncharted waters of South Africa; Anton, the golden boy who bitterly resents his life’s unfulfilled potential; Astrid, whose beauty is her power; and the youngest, Amor, whose life is shaped by a nebulous feeling of guilt. Reunited by four funerals over three decades, the dwindling family reflects the atmosphere of its country—one of resentment, renewal, and, ultimately, hope. The Promise is an epic drama that unfurls against the unrelenting march of national history, sure to please current fans and attract many new ones. “Simply: you must read it.”—Claire Messud, Harper’s Magazine
“A lovely, lethal, disturbing novel” of the dashed hopes of post-apartheid South Africa and the small betrayals that doom a friendship (The Guardian). An extraordinary parable of the corruption of the flesh and spirit, The Good Doctor has inspired enthusiastic interest around the world and has assured Damon Galgut’s place as a major international talent. When Laurence Waters arrives at his new post at a deserted rural hospital, staff physician Frank Eloff is instantly suspicious. Laurence is everything Frank is not—young, optimistic, and full of big ideas. The whole town is beset with new arrivals and the return of old faces. Frank reestablishes a liaison with a woman, one that will have unexpected consequences. A self-made dictator from apartheid days is rumored to be active in cross-border smuggling, and a group of soldiers has moved in to track him, led by a man from Frank’s own dark past. Laurence sees only possibilities—but in a world where the past is demanding restitution from the present, his ill-starred idealism cannot last. “Galgut’s prose, its gentle rhythms and straightforward sentences edging toward revelation, is utterly seductive and suspenseful . . . Galgut is a master of psychological tension. . . . Tragic and brilliant.” —The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
A year ago Patrick Winter was in Namibia completing his military service. Now, during the its first free elections, Patrick has returned to the country he defended, the place where he fell in love for the first and only time. With the country poised to change forever, Patrick is forced to revisit his past and scale the wall that he has built around his painful memories of love and war, and loss.
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