O Booker Award for English Language Fiction was announced on Wednesday at the end of the day.

Translated by José Mário Silva, entitled “A Promessa”, Damon Galgut’s book tells a story of his country, set at the end of ‘apartheid’, in which he explores the relationships between the members of a decaying white family, through of the sequence of four funerals that accompany the decline of the family.

Damon Galgut’s new novel, which was nominated for the third time for this award, chronicles the events in terms of the effects that the political and social process has on this white family from the outskirts of Pretoria.

The award jury considers it to be a novel that allows “to see and think in an innovative way”.

“The Promise” is Galgut’s ninth novel and the first in seven years. The author, who lives in Cape Town, was previously selected for the Booker in 2003, with “O Bom Doutor”, and, in 2010, with “Numa Sala Estranha”, a book published the following year in Portugal by Alfaguara, with the title “An Unknown Room”. His 2005 novel “A Pedreira” was adapted to the cinema.

Jury chairperson, historian and academic Maya Jasanoff, said “The Promise” stunned from the start of the selection process as “a penetrating and incredibly well-constructed account of a white South African family at the end of ‘Apartheid’ ‘and the period that followed”.

“With each reading, we feel the book grows [em dimensão]. With narrative economy, it offers moving perspectives on generational conflicts, reflects on life in full and on death, “and does not leave in blank all the previous past in present-day South Africa, translated into the metaphor in the title,” The Promise “

The jury compares Galgut’s approach to family life with the narrative style of American writer William Faulkner, Nobel Prize for Literature in 1949. For the internal dimension of the characters and their characterization, parallel to the British writer Virginia Woolf.

Damon Galgut does all this “with a sensibility, artistry and scope that are his”, the jury continues, recognizing in the work “a spectacular demonstration of how the novel can make you see and think again”. So, for the jury, “‘The Promise’ does.”

“This is a book about legacies, those we inherit and those we leave, and by awarding it this year’s Booker Prize, we hope it will resonate with readers for decades to come.”

In addition to Maya Jasanoff, the jury for this year’s edition was made up of the editor Horatia Harrod, the actress Natascha McElhone, the professor and writer Chigozie Obioma, also selected for Booker in previous editions, and the former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Willians.

Damon Galgut, as winner of the Booker Prize, receives 50,000 pounds (about 59,000 euros).

Born in Pretoria in 1963, Galgut wrote his first novel at age 17, “A Sinless Season”. Among his works are titles such as “Pequeno Círculo de Seres” and “O Belo Grito dos Porcos”.

In Portugal, there are also published “O Jogor”, also by Alfaguara, and “Verão Ártico”, the latter with the Jacarandá seal.

The American Patricia Lockwood, with her fiction debut, “No One is Talking About This”, the Sri Lankan author Anuk Arudpragasam, with “A Passage North”, the British of Somali origin Nadifa Mohamed, with the novel “The Fortune Men”, American Richard Powers, with “Bewilderment”, and his compatriot Maggie Shipstead, with “Great Circle”, were the remaining finalists of the Booker Prize of fiction 2021.

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