S African Damon Galgut wins Booker Prize for ‘The Promise’

By JILL LAWLESS
Associated Press

LONDON (AP) — South African writer Damon Galgut has won the prestigious Booker Prize for fiction with his story of racism and reckoning “The Promise.” Galgut was British bookmakers’ favorite to win the 50,000-pound ($69,000) prize. His novel follows the fortunes of a white South African family in the years before and after the end of apartheid, and their failure to keep a promise to a Black employee. Galgut was awarded the prize Wednesday in London on his third time as a finalist, for a book the judges called a “tour de force.” Founded in 1969, the Booker Prize has a reputation for transforming writers’ careers and is open to all novels in English published in the U.K