South African playwright and novelist Damon Galgut won the 2021 Booker Prize for “The Promise”, his novel which chronicles a family from the late apartheid era through to Jacob Zuma's presidency.
London – South African playwright and novelist Damon Galgut on Wednesday won the 2021 Booker Prize for"The Promise", his third shortlisted novel which chronicles a family in his homeland from the late apartheid era through to Jacob Zuma's presidency.
"It's taken a long while to get here and now that I have, I kind of feel that I shouldn't be here," added the author, who wrote his first novel aged 17. The prize, whose previous recipients include Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood and Hilary Mantel, is one of the leading literary awards for novels written in English.Maya Jasanoff, chair of this year's judges, lauded all the final contenders but singled out"The Promise" for its"incredible originality and fluidity of voice" and as a book"really dense with historical and metaphorical significance".
Another US writer, Patricia Lockwood, 39, was nominated for her debut novel,"No One Is Talking About This", featuring a 30-something obsessed with social media who has to deal with a shocking medical diagnosis.Sri Lankan writer Anuk Arudpragasam, 33, in his second novel,"A Passage North", focuses on the traumatic legacy of the country's almost three-decade civil war that ended in 2009.
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