Meet the author: Damon Galgut

Tue 08.11.2022

20:00 - 22:00

interview, book presentation

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Location

Passa Porta Bookshop

Price

presale : €13/10 (€15 supporting united stages) - at the door : €15/12 (€17 supporting united stages)

discount

the preferential rate offers a €3 discount for all who feel like they need it.

Language

in English

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Meet the author

The meetings with writers at Passa Porta, prepared with passion, courage and thoroughness, are more than simply the presentation of literary works. We seek to achieve a genuine connection between writer and reader, and among readers themselves.

Go to overview

With The Promise, Damon Galgut, long South Africa’s best-kept secret, became a world-renowned writer. The gruesome family story won the Booker Prize in 2021 and found a lot of enthusiastic readers.

The Promise

Shortly before her death, Amor Swart’s mother gets her husband to make her a promise, a promise to which the young girl is a silent witness: their black maid, Salomé, is to get her own house, as thanks for years of loyal service. Amor’s father has his own priorities, however, and the promise is not kept. After his death, new opportunities arise, but Amor’s brother and sister go their own way and continue to resist: Anton is cowardly and refuses to make choices, while Astrid is focused on her own interests. Amor is left with a latent sense of guilt.

‘I don’t write to entertain people, not even myself. I want to do something I haven’t done before. In a sense, I write to discover why I am writing. Why do the characters fascinate me? Where are they taking me? I work from darkness to light, from the unconscious to the conscious.’

Damon Galgut

About the author

Damon Galgut (b. 1963) is a South African playwright and writer. He says he became a writer after being diagnosed with cancer of the lymph nodes as a child. During his lengthy illness and recovery, he ‘learned to associate books and stories with a certain kind of attention and comfort’. His work has earned several nominations and awards. The Good Doctor won the Commonwealth Writers Prize and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the International Dublin Literary Award. The Impostor was nominated for the Commonwealth Writers Prize and In a Strange Room for the Man Booker Prize. Galgut lives in Cape Town, where he is currently working on a collection of short stories.

Jelle Van Riet (b. 1971) writes as a literary journalist for Standaard der Letteren.

Galgut is often compared to his famous fellow countryman Coetzee. But Galgut has none of the icy monotony and rigid moralism of Coetzee; he handles every conceivable register smoothly and accurately. The Promise is a tragicomedy, a grotesque pandemonium of powerlessness, absurdism and mutual immoralism. But at the bottom of the cesspool, a negative of humanity often glitters. No, Coetzee never came to mind. But another writer of rural novels did, closer to home. Especially in the many scenes in which Galgut, down to earth, lets loose in exposures that are as painful as they are hilarious, he comes across as an alter ego of Hugo Claus, of Claus at his best.

Cyrille Offermans in De Groene Amsterdammer

Org. Passa Porta, Querido, L&M Books