The Promise’s structure is formally inventive, with the narration shifting between perspectives the Booker judges called it an “unusual narrative style a testament to the flourishing of the novel in the 21st century”. Humour opened up a way for me to write about the human side of things, because the book’s not really about the death, it’s about the living.” I don’t think I would have wanted to spend four years writing a book that was pulling me down. The Promise deals with the “heavy topics” of “funerals, death, decay and dereliction. Galgut said it was important to him that the book was funny. He added “I hope people will take African writing a little more seriously now.” I’d like to accept this on behalf of all the stories told and untold, the writers heard and unheard from the remarkable continent that I come from.” 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.

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