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  • Published: 30 August 2022
  • ISBN: 9781529198188
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 176
  • RRP: $26.00

The Quarry

From the Booker prize-winning author of The Promise



Booker Prize winner Damon Galgut's devastating 1995 novel on guilt and the pursuit of justice

Give yourself up. Whatever you've done. They'll find you. In the end.
A man with no name staggers down a lonely stretch of road that cuts through the simmering veld of rural South Africa. He is exhausted and hungry yet dives for the long grass whenever cars approach. He is on the run.

When a minister on his way to a new congregation offers help - at a price - the fugitive's desperation boils over. Stealing the minister's identity, he is successfully taken in by the township. But when a body is discovered in a nearby quarry, and the local police captain's suspicions grow, the hunt reignites with devastating consequences.

'One of South Africa's great literary voices' Economist
'Galgut's prose feels as if it's been fired through a crucible, burning away all the comfortable excess until only a hard, concentrated purity remains' Daily Telegraph

  • Published: 30 August 2022
  • ISBN: 9781529198188
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 176
  • RRP: $26.00

About the author

Damon Galgut

DAMON GALGUT is the author of nine novels. He won the Booker Prize 2021 for The Promise, having been shortlisted for the prize twice before (The Good Doctor and In A Strange Room). He lives and works in Cape Town

Also by Damon Galgut

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Praise for The Quarry

In a bleak morality tale about a fugitive from justice, Galgut again demonstrates his flair for charting the vicissitudes of human despair in modern-day South Africa

Publisher's Weekly

A remarkable achievement...Galgut's prose has a spare beauty, suggesting volcanic emotions held rigorously in check

Kirkus Reviews

The Quarry has [a] dry, feral quality... Galgut's landscape reminds a reader of Breyten Breytenbach's South Africa...roads leading to some vanishing point, the feeling of pursuit... The issues of guilt, injustice and redemption give the novel a biblical feel. The writing shines in its peripheral vision, in the backdrops and corners of its scenes

Los Angeles Times

This taut existential thriller...divulges little but manages to suggest volumes... Stark, almost brutal minimalism

Boston Globe

A minimalist, almost allegorical story... Its tension is almost unbearable

Library Journal

One of South Africa's great literary voices

The Economist

[A] spare, intense story of rural South Africa... His clear, elemental prose is never generic

Booklist

An...uncompromising journey into the heart of South Africa's darkness, written in prose that is at once stark and striking. The Quarry is Galgut's homage to Dostoevsky

Literary Review

An extremely atmospheric book in a hazy, raw and entirely realistic sense.... Galgut's story suggests that such points on the map, despite their ghostly quiet, are seething with repressed violence, ready to explode.... A compelling read about guilt and evasion of truth

The Spectator

The scenes of township, quarry and shorescape have a strange, Beckett-like glow and menace

Scotland on Sunday

Beautifully written

Guardian

[Galgut's] prose feels as if it's been fired through a crucible, burning away all the comfortable excess until only a hard, concentrated purity remains.... There are thrilling images here, powerful themes and almost scarily precise writing... Galgut is at the leading edge of what is turning out to be a brilliant documentation of South Africa's post-apartheid transition

Daily Telegraph

We not only read the narrative, but seem to be participating in the headlong rush of events.... A minor masterpiece. The Quarry is told in clear prose where every word counts and the plot and characters are utterly compelling

Sunday Herald

A slim, haunting work of poignancy and near perfection

The Globe and Mail

Galgut writes here with a combination of JM Coetzee's uncluttered simplicity - every sentence stands out, and so seems pregnant with meaning - and Cormac McCarthy's rhythmic biblical dread

The Times