Damon Galgut, who won the Booker last year for his portrait of a white South African family imploding, is now in the running for rival literary award the Rathbones Folio prize.
The South African author’s The Promise is one of eight titles in the running for the £30,000 Folio, which was first awarded in 2014 after controversy over comments from the Booker’s judges in 2011. The Booker panel that year had stressed the importance of books that “zip along”, and the Folio subsequently announced its intention to “establish a clear and uncompromising standard of excellence” in the titles it rewarded. Today, the Rathbones Folio is open across genres, to all works of literature written in English, and to English-language writers from around the world, with previous winners including poet Raymond Antrobus, short story writer George Saunders, and memoirist Carmen Maria Machado.
