Scala Radio Book Club: The Promise by Damon Galgut
2021 Booker Prize winner
Last updated 16th Dec 2021
On the 16th December, Mark Forrest chatted to the winner of the Booker Prize 2021, Damon Galgut, on his novel The Promise in the Scala Radio Book Club.
The Promise charts the crash and burn of a white South African family, living 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 the failed promise to the Black woman who has worked for them her whole life. After years of service, Salome was promised her own house, her own land... yet somehow, as each decade passes, that promise remains unfulfilled.
The narrator's eye shifts and blinks: moving fluidly between characters, flying into their dreams; deliciously lethal in its observation. And as the country moves from old deep divisions to its new so-called fairer society, the lost promise of more than just one family hovers behind the novel's title.
In this story of a diminished family, sharp and tender emotional truths hit home.
Mark was interested to know more about Damon’s style of writing. ‘The narration style of the book is really fascinating. It moves from first to third person, to commentary. Why did you want to use this more stylized way to tell this story?’
‘I think in the case of this book, the story could best be told by having this roving fluid narrator whose voice jumps around from one perspective to another, sometimes inhabiting the mind or psyche of a particular character,’ said Damon. ‘I sort of stumbled upon it as the best vehicle for this particular novel, because I got diverted into writing a film script. When I returned to writing my book, I brought some of the logic of the cinematic narrative to the prose.’
‘Another striking aspect of this novel is that you are not scared to kill off some of your central characters, which is completely contrary to the wisdom that says that's not a good idea, because readers may well be invested in them! Why did that not bother you?’ Mark asked.
‘Well, the very first conception of this book came to me as the notion of telling a family story through funerals. It was sort of built into the architecture of the book that people are going to be dying along the way and you can't really get away from that. I suppose it helps in the case of the Swart family that most of them are so, sort of, deplorable. So perhaps readers don't mind quite so much when they pop their clogs.’
Mark then went on to ask how Damon felt when he won the Booker Prize for his novel The Promise.
‘It was just a very unreal moment, I was not quite walking on Earth. I don't have a clear recollection of much of what followed until later in the evening when I guess I reconnected with my body. It was the best kind of shock.’