![]() ![]() Receiving the prize, Galgut said “This has been a great year for African writing. But what makes them ‘representative’ isn’t their characters, it’s the times they’re living through,” he said in an interview for the Booker prize. “They’re a mix of English and Afrikaans, and a hodge-podge of creeds and beliefs, too. ![]() Galgut, who grew up in Pretoria, where The Promise is set, and now lives in Cape Town, has described the Swart family as “a kind of amalgamation of everything I grew up with in Pretoria”. With each reading of this book, it revealed something new.” For me, The Promise manages to pull together the qualities of great storytelling – it’s a book that has a lot to chew on – with remarkable attention to structure and literary style. One of the judges drew a distinction between the very good and the great. “Before we even started talking about the individual titles, we had a more wide-ranging discussion about what it is we feel makes a book a winner. It combines an extraordinary story with rich themes – the history of the last 40 years in South Africa – in an incredibly well-wrought package,” said the chair of the Booker judges, historian Maya Jasanoff. “We felt among the judges that this book really is a tour de force. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |