WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE 2021

One family. One promise. One chance to tell a new story.

'A moving, brilliantly told family epic' Elizabeth Day

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

On a farm outside Pretoria, the Swarts are gathering for Ma's funeral. The younger generation, Anton and Amor, detest everything the family stand for - not least their treatment of the Black woman who has worked for them her whole life. Salome was to be given her own house, her own land...yet somehow, that vow is carefully ignored.

As each decade passes, and the family assemble again, one question hovers over them. Can you ever escape the repercussions of a broken promise?


'A tour de force... A spectacular demonstration of how the novel can make us see and think afresh' Booker Judges, 2021

'Astonishing' Colm Tóibín

'Utterly compelling' Patrick Gale

FROM THE BOOKER PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR OF THE PROMISE

Shortlisted for the 2015 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction
Shortlisted for the 2015 Sunday Times Barry Ronge Fiction Prize
Shortlisted for the 2015 University of Johannesburg English Literary Award
Nominated for the 2014 Folio Prize

In 1912, the SS Birmingham approaches India. On board is Morgan Forster, novelist and man of letters, who is embarking on a journey of discovery. As Morgan stands on deck, the promise of a strange new future begins to take shape before his eyes. The seeds of a story start to gather at the corner of his mind: a sense of impending menace, lust in close confines, under a hot, empty sky. It will be another twelve years, and a second time spent in India, before A Passage to India, E. M. Forster's great work of literature, is published. During these years, Morgan will come to a profound understanding of himself as a man, and of the infinite subtleties and complexity of human nature, bringing these great insights to bear in his remarkable novel.

At once a fictional exploration of the life and times of one of Britain's finest novelists, his struggle to find a way of living and being, and a stunningly vivid evocation of the mysterious alchemy of the creative process, Arctic Summer is a literary masterpiece, by one of the finest writers of his generation.

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.

La impactante historia de una familia en crisis ganadora del Premio Booker 2021.

Los Swart son una familia blanca que vive desde hace generaciones en una granja en las afueras de Pretoria, en Sudáfrica. Tras la muerte de la madre, se reúnen todos para el funeral en la casa familiar. Amor y Anton, dos de sus hijos, rechazan lo que la familia representa y no olvidan la promesa que su padre hizo a su madre poco antes de morir: que Salome, la mujer negra que lleva trabajando toda la vida para ellos y que la cuidó en sus últimos días, podría quedarse con la pequeña casa en la que siempre ha vivido. Pero el tiempo va pasando y la promesa no se cumple.

La narración sigue los pasos de los Swart a lo largo de más de tres décadas; a través de la minuciosa exploración de los miembros de la familia y sus conflictos, Galgut nos habla también de los cambios políticos y sociales del país tras el fin de la segregación racial.

La promesa, una originalísima y conmovedora novela ganadora del premio Booker 2021, está considerada como una de las grandes obras literarias en inglés de la última década.

«Uno de los mejores escritores del mundo (…) El libro más importante de la última década.» Edmund White

«Es tierna y brutal, y Amor, su enigmática heroína, es el personaje más fascinante de la narrativa reciente. La recordaré y recordaré este libro maravilloso y abrumador durante mucho tiempo.» Peter Cameron

«La historia posee una profundidad asombrosa, como si los personajes hubiesen sido imaginados a lo largo del tiempo, con paciencia y tierno cuidado.»Colm Tóibín

«La novela adquiere una dimensión estética y dramática de muy alto nivel.» J. Ernesto Ayala-Dip (El Correo)

«La promesa celebra la capacidad de la novela para vengarse de la realidad más oscura mirándola desde ángulos que desarticulan todo conato de uniformidad o simplicidad.» Antonio Lozano (Cultura/s - La Vanguardia)

«La promesa es una gran, hermosa y contundente novela contemporánea, y además esconde un ejercicio de virtuosismo.» Ricardo Menéndez Salmón (La Nueva España)

«Galgut escribe verdadera literatura porque es su dominio del lenguaje el que tras-ciende y convierte en verdadera la historia funesta que aquí se cuenta.» Javier Aparicio Maydeu (El País)

«La promesa aborda el espinoso asunto de la familia, sus arenas movedizas, con una crudeza y complejidad que se agradece.» Fermín Herrero (El Cuaderno)

«La genialidad del libro está en la voz del narrador, que se desliza con fluidez por los personajes en una polifonía preñada de de-cadencia y bancarrota moral que la sátira y un humor desencantado hacen llevaderas.» Marta Rebón (La Lectura / El Mundo)

«Damon Galgut nos presenta una lúcida radiografía social de Sudáfrica, con múltiples connotaciones y narrada de una manera apabullante que atrapa desde la primera página.

The first collection of extraordinary stories from one of the greatest writers of our time.

With astonishing clarity, Booker Prize winner Galgut explores both the intimacies and violence of family life against the complex landscape of 1980s South Africa.

From a mother who experiences a devastating unmooring after her child falls gravely ill, to a son retracing his late father's brief yet passionate affair, the stories ripple out from one another, tenderly exposing those bonds we cannot escape.

PRAISE FOR DAMON GALGUT:

'Galgut seems to deliver effortlessly...there's nothing he can't do' Times

'Damon Galgut is very nearly without peer...an essential writer' Garth Greenwell

'Terrifically agile and consistently interesting...certainly up there with Nadine Gordimer and JM Coetzee' Guardian

Give yourself up. Whatever you've done. They'll find you. In the end.

A man with no name staggers down a lonely stretch of road that cuts through the simmering veld of rural South Africa. He is exhausted and hungry yet dives for the long grass whenever cars approach. He is on the run.

When a minister on his way to a new congregation offers help - at a price - the fugitive's desperation boils over. Stealing the minister's identity, he is successfully taken in by the township. But when a body is discovered in a nearby quarry, and the local police captain's suspicions grow, the hunt reignites with devastating consequences.

'One of South Africa's great literary voices' Economist

'Galgut's prose feels as if it's been fired through a crucible, burning away all the comfortable excess until only a hard, concentrated purity remains' Daily Telegraph

1986, dans une ferme non loin de Pretoria. La famille Swart fait ses adieux à la matriarche, Rachel. Avant de mourir, Rachel a fait une promesse : léguer à Salome, leur domestique noire, la maison dans laquelle elle vit. Cette décision divise le clan et la solennité du deuil ne parvient pas à masquer les dissensions qui se font jour. Les langues se délient, les rancœurs et les convoitises s’exacerbent au point de faire voler en éclats les liens qui unissent les uns et les autres. Cette promesse doit-elle être tenue et à quel prix ?

Le roman suit les Swart sur trois décennies, de 1986 à 2018. Alors que l’Afrique du Sud se transforme profondément, le racisme et la violence s’infiltrent encore partout, jusque dans la vie intime de chacun. À travers le déclin d’une famille protestante, c’est toute l’histoire d’un pays que Damon Galgut dessine en filigrane dans une langue virtuose qui nous fait entendre les voix de chacun de ses personnages.

Traduit de l’anglais (Afrique du Sud) par Hélène Papot.

Mit großer erzählerischer Kraft und nah an den Personen schildert Damon Galgut eine Familiengeschichte, die sich über dreißig Jahre des politischen Umbruchs in Südafrika erstreckt - von der Apartheid bis hin zur Demokratie. Während sich das Land von den alten tiefen Spaltungen zu einer neuen, gerechteren Gesellschaft hin bewegt, schwebt über allem die Frage: Wie viel Verbitterung, wie viel Erneuerung, wie viel Hoffnung bleiben?

FROM THE BOOKER PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR OF THE PROMISE

SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE, 2003

A year ago Patrick Winter was in Namibia completing his military service. Now, during the 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, war and loss.

'An astonishingly sensitive writer.' Irish Times

'Engaging and enduring... devastating in the lucidity and austere assurance of its prose.' TLS

'A work whose psychological observation is as subtle as its political analysis.' The Times

'A beautifully written and thoughtful meditation on love, loss and longing.' Attitude