There is nothing unusual or remarkable about the Swart family, oh no, they resemble the family from the next farm and the one beyond that, just an ordinary bunch of white South Africans, and if you don’t believe it then listen to us speak ...

The many voices of The Promise tell a story in four snapshots, each one centered on a family funeral, each one happening in a different decade. In the background, a different president is in power, and a different spirit hangs over the country, while in the foreground the family fights over what they call their farm, on a worthless piece of land outside Pretoria.

Over large jumps in time, people get older, faces and laws and lives all change, while a brother and sister circle around a promise made long ago, and never kept ...

On a lonely stretch of road a nameless man commits a murder.

The victim is a religious minister on his way to take up a post in a nearby town. When the murderer decides to steal the dead man’s identity, his first official duty is to bury the body, which has just been found near a disused quarry. But the head of the local police takes a close interest in the new minister’s work – watching, listening, slowly circling his prey.

In The Quarry, Damon Galgut brings the power of myth to his tender prose to create a devastating drama that builds to a climax that is almost too much to bear.

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 Toibin 'Utterly compelling' Patrick Gale

FROM THE BOOKER PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR OF THE PROMISE Winner of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and shortlisted for the Man Booker, The Good Doctor is a powerful tale of a friendship overshadowed by betrayal, set against the tawdry hopes and disappointments of a post-apartheid South Africa 'The Good Doctor will be seen as one of the great literary triumphs of South Africa's transition... by a novelist of great and growing power.' -- Rian Malan, author of My Traitor's Heart Laurence Waters arrives at his rural hospital postingfull of optimism. Frank, the disgruntled deputy, is forced to share his room with the new arrival but is determined to stay out of Laurence's ambitious schemes. When the dilapidated hospital is looted, the two men find themselves uneasy allies in a world where the past is demanding restitution from the present.

Damon Galgut is one of South Africa's most exciting new literary voices. Jin The Impostor, his first novel since The Good Doctor, Galgut leads his readers into the developing heart of postapartheid South Africa, a landscape being reshaped by new waves of money and power. Adam Napier leaves Johannesburg looking for a fresh start. Jobless and directionless, but with a head full of literary ambitions, he moves into his brother's dilapidated house on the edge of a backwater town. One day he encounters Canning, a man who claims Adam saved his life in their school days, but whom Adam does not remember at all. But he plays along and, for a time, enjoys all that Canning has: a vast fortune and game preserve inherited from his father, and a beautiful, mysterious younger wife to whom Adam is compulsively, dangerously drawn. A spellbinding achievement from one of the defining members of a new generation of African writers, The Impostor evokes a glittering world in which the moneyed old guard, newly empowered black Africans, and shady foreign businessmen jockey for a piece of the new South African dream.

A finalist for the 2010 Man Booker Prize
In this newest novel from South African writer Damon Galgut, a young loner travels across eastern Africa, Europe, and India. Unsure what he's after, and reluctant to return home, he follows the paths of travelers he meets along the way. Treated as a lover, a follower, a guardian, each new encounter-with an enigmatic stranger, a group of careless backpackers, a woman on the verge-leads him closer to confronting his own identity. Traversing the quiet of wilderness and the frenzy of border crossings, every new direction is tinged with surmounting mourning, as he is propelled toward a tragic conclusion.
"In a Strange Room" is a brilliant, stylish novel of anger and compassion, longing and thwarted desire, and a hauntingly beautiful evocation of life on the road. First published in "The Paris Review" in three parts, one of which was selected for a National Magazine Award, and another for the O. Henry Prize, "In a Strange Room" was shortlisted for the 2010 Man Booker Prize.

Damon Galgut's third novel, a fictionalized biography of English author E.M. Forster, focuses on Forster's many years in India and the process of writing his masterpiece, A Passage to India. This compact, finely wrought novel also addresses Forster's unforgiving childhood in England and the homosexuality he feared and repressed throughout his life. Psychologically acute without being sentimental, Forster's relationships are described with compassion and great care. Galgut is a master at constructing strange, compelling landscapes, and Arctic Summer shifts seamlessly between staid, restricting England and Cairo and vibrant, pleasantly, absurd India. Moments of gentle humor shine through the sparse prose, lending Forster a humanity that makes his story all the more heartbreaking.

The family – that small circle of beings where love should flourish – can be an arid and alienating territory where hatred and violence may ignite.

On the surface, Small Circle of Beings, the novella which gives its title to this collection, concerns a family living what would appear to be an idyllic life. When the couple’s only child falls ill, tension and strain begin to take their toll, and the hairline cracks and fissures in his parents’ relationship gradually widen and split open until a marriage that seemed solid and secure falls irretrievably apart. Galgut’s economy of style and his chilling gift for understatement and the macabre are nowhere more eloquently displayed than in this gripping story.

The same sensitive and atmospheric writing can also be seen in the shorter stories – ‘Lovers’, ‘Shadows’, ‘The Clay Ox’, and ‘Rick’.

A young man makes three journeys that take him through Greece, India and Africa. He travels lightly, simply. To those who travel with him and those whom he meets on the way – including a handsome, enigmatic stranger, a group of careless backpackers and a woman on the edge – he is the Follower, the Lover and the Guardian. Yet, despite the man’s best intentions, each journey ends in disaster.

Together, these three journeys will change his whole life.

A novel of longing and thwarted desire, rage and compassion, In a Strange Room is the hauntingly beautiful evocation of one man’s search for love, and a place to call home.

When Laurence Waters arrives at his rural hospital posting, Frank, a fellow doctor there, is instantly suspicious. Laurence is everything Frank is not – young, optimistic and full of new schemes. The two become uneasy friends, while the rest of the staff in the deserted hospital view Laurence with a mixture of awe and mistrust.

The town beyond the hospital is also coping with new arrivals, and the return of old faces. The Brigadier – a self-fashioned dictator from apartheid days – is rumoured to still be alive. And down at Mama’s Place, a group of soldiers has moved in with their malign commandant, a man Frank has met before and is keen to avoid. Laurence wants to help – but in a world where the past is demanding restitution from the present, his ill-starred idealism cannot last.

In gleaming prose Damon Galgut has created a literary thriller out of an unlikely friendship. The Good Doctor is a gripping novelistic high-wire act

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

A year ago Patrick Winter, a young South African, was sent to Namibia to complete his military service and to defend his country against ‘terrorism’. Now he is back, to meet Godfrey, his mother’s freedom-fighter boyfriend, and to witness the country’s first free elections.

But Patrick needs to confront and process much more than a country in transition, and in doing so he is forced to revisit his past and to face the pain and the demons that haunt him.

Against the backdrop of a world in flux at the start of a new century, Arctic Summer portrays the life of British writer E. M. Forster: his inner turmoil, his search for love and the story behind one of the greatest novels in English, A Passage to India.

In 1912, Forster follows his friend Syed Ross Masood to India. It is on this journey – travelling around the country while it is still under British rule – that the seeds of his novel are planted. But it will be another twelve years, and a second time spent in India, before his book is published. Between these two journeys lie the writing of an unpublishable novel, the outbreak of the First World War, and a long stay in Alexandria, where he has an unlikely affair with an Egyptian tram conductor. As we follow Forster across continents – stuttering, aching, his love mostly unrequited – Galgut captures with colour and exquisite delicacy the England, India and Egypt of the era.

Meticulously researched, Arctic Summer conjures the figure of Forster in all his contradictory genius, providing a fascinating glimpse into the creation of a masterpiece.

FROM THE BOOKER PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR OF THE PROMISE A young man takes three journeys, through Greece, India and Africa. He travels lightly, simply. To those who travel with him and those whom he meets on the way - including a handsome, enigmatic stranger, a group of careless backpackers and a woman on the edge - he is the Follower, the Lover and the Guardian. Yet, despite the man's best intentions, each journey ends in disaster. Together, these three journeys will change his whole life. A novel of longing and thwarted desire, rage and compassion, In a Strange Room is the hauntingly beautiful evocation of one man's search for love, and a place to call home.

FROM THE BOOKER PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR OF THE PROMISE 'A masterly piece of fiction. Delicate and detailed' Daily Mail 'It is a project to which Galgut, whose fiction has often covered the terrain of love, race and politics, seems perfectly suited as a writer... A remarkable, lyrical tribute' Guardian In this literary tour de force, twice Booker shortlisted novelist Damon Galgut evokes the life and work of E. M. Forster, his travels to India, and the freedom and inspiration he found there. 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.

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

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