Booker Prize-winning author Damon Galgut to meet Korean readers in Gwanghwamun

[Financial News] South African writer Damon Galgut, who won the 2021 Booker Prize for his novel The Promise, will meet Korean readers. A conversation exploring his works and literary world will be held after he was named this year’s recipient of the 15th Park Kyung-ni Literary Award.
According to Kyobo Book Centre on the 20th, “2026 Conversations with World Writers” will be held at 7 p.m. on November 3 at Daesan Hall on the 23rd floor of the Kyobo Building in Gwanghwamun, Seoul. The event is jointly organized by Kyobo Book Centre and the Daesan Foundation, with Park Hye-jin, an editor of international literature at Minumsa Publishing Group, serving as moderator.
The theme of the conversation, sponsored by the Toji Cultural Foundation and Kyobo Life Insurance, is “The Magic That Connects Heart to Heart: The Voice of Books.” Galgut is visiting Korea at the invitation of the Toji Cultural Foundation.
Born in Pretoria, South Africa, in 1963, Galgut began his literary career with the 1982 novel A Sinless Season. He was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for The Good Doctor in 2003 and In a Strange Room in 2010, and won the prize in 2021 for The Promise.
The Promise is set in South Africa around the end of apartheid and depicts the changes in a white family through four funerals. It tells the story of a promise to give a Black woman, who worked for the family all her life, a house and land—a promise that goes unfulfilled for many years.
The Park Kyung-ni Literary Award jury said Galgut’s work expands South Africa’s inequality and failure of reform into universal issues such as race, class and guilt. It also said, “The work underscores that only by facing failure and deprivation can we find the first step toward true redemption.”
“Conversations with World Writers” is an event in which Kyobo Book Centre and the Daesan Foundation invite writers from abroad to broaden exchanges with Korean literature.
Applications to attend will be accepted on a first-come, first-served basis through the Kyobo Book Centre and Daesan Foundation websites. Korean-English simultaneous interpretation will be provided at the venue, and the event will later also be made available on the Daesan Foundation’s YouTube channel.

[email protected] Jang In-seo Reporter