Damon Galgut has won the Booker Prize with The Promise described by judges as “a spectacular demonstration of how the novel can make us see and think afresh”.

Booksellers hailed the novel as "a true literary masterpiece" and looked forward to a surge in sales. The Promise is set in South Africa during the country’s transition out of Apartheid, and explores the interconnected relationships between the members of a diminishing white family through the sequential lens of four funerals. 

Damon Galgut is a South African playwright and novelist, who wrote his first novel aged 17. He's been shortlisted three times for the Booker Prize and finally took the crown this year for his ninth book. Galgut was previously shortlisted for the prize in 2003 for The Good Doctor and in 2010 for In A Strange Room. He becomes the third South African to win the award, following in the footsteps of 1974 joint winner Nadine Gordimer and J M Coetzee who won in both 1983 and 1999.

The writer was crowned the £50,000 prize-winner at BBC Broadcasting House’s Radio Theatre on Wednesday 3rd November during a ceremony hosted by the BBC’s Samira Ahmed and featuring contributions from last year’s winner Douglas Stuart, Ben Okri and the Duchess of Cornwall.

Explaining the choice, chair of judges Maya Jasanoff said the book "astonished” the judges from the outset “as a penetrating and incredibly well-constructed account of a white South African family navigating the end of Apartheid and its aftermath”.

She added: “On each reading we felt that the book grew. With an almost deceptive narrative economy, it offers moving insights into generational divides, meditates on what makes a fulfilling life and how to process death, and explores the capacious metaphorical implications of 'promise' in relation to modern South Africa.”

Jasanoff said she and fellow judges Chigozie Obioma, Rowan Williams, Horatia Harrod and Natascha McElhone had “long and convivial discussions” before they arrived at the decision "collectively as a group". She said the judges were “very happy with the result” and the meeting to decide the winner, their first in person, “was really long because we talked about every single one of these books in great depth”.

At a press conference following his win Galgut reflected on the book's message. He insisted he "didn't plan the overall trajectory of the book to be a downward one" but said he thought the portrait he paints of modern South Africa "is not a happy one". "Things are not great with us right now... South Africa has seen better days," he said.

"As a writer, all you can really do is draw attention to it, I guess. I'm not one of those people who believe that books can change the world, I believe that books reflect it. The more acutely you can make people feel a situation, the more chance there is that the situation may change."

He said if he had to give a message to his younger self he would tell them to "pesist, persist, persist" but did express a worry about how the win may affect his creative process.

"Most writers require solitude. Many hours of it to work properly. Even the relatively limited amount of attention that has come to me in previous years has eaten into that so I have only a dim sense of what winning this prize might mean for my future" he said.

We asked one of our readers to give a personal take on The Booker Prize shortlisted titles; 

 A Passage North by Anuk Arudpragasam

 No One is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood

 The Fortune Men by Nadifa Mohamed

 Bewilderment by Richard Powers

 Great Circle  by Maggie Shipstead

And the winner The Promise by Damon Galgut

Image, Galgut with Chair of Judges Jasanoff: David Parry / PA