One of the judges drew a distinction between the very good and the great. “It combines an extraordinary story with rich themes – the history of the last 40 years in South Africa – in an incredibly well-wrought package.”īefore they discussed the books, she said, “we had a more wide-ranging discussion about what it is we feel makes a book a winner.

“We felt that this book really is a tour de force,” Jasanoff said. The judging panel comprised novelist Chigozie Obioma, the writer and editor Horatia Harrod, the actor Natascha McElhone, the writer and former Archbishop Rowan Williams, and the chair, historian Maya Jasanoff. The book evokes William Faulkner in its “searching examination of family, place, and the dysfunctions that connect them” and channels Virginia Woolf in its “deft inhabiting of different characters’ consciousnesses,” the judges suggest, but “with a sensibility, artistry, and scope that are entirely his own.” They described The Promise as “a strong, unambiguous commentary on the history of South Africa and of humanity itself that can best be summed up in the question: does true justice exist in this world?” It is, they say, “a spectacular demonstration of how the novel can make us see and think afresh.” The judges for the £50,000 award made a unanimous decision. The South African stylist was previously shortlisted twice: in 2003 for his fifth novel The Good Doctor and in 2010 for his seventh novel In a Strange Room. Damon Galgut has been awarded the 2021 Booker Prize, for his ninth novel The Promise, the story of a white family dealing with its failed promise to a Black woman who worked for them her whole life.

The promise booker prize