Damon Galgut
Damon Galgut
Damon Galgutis an award-winning South African playwright and novelist...
NationalitySouth African
ProfessionPlaywright
Date of Birth12 November 1963
african confess south
I should confess that I'm woefully under-read in South African fiction.
behind goes passage wanting
I've been wanting to write a book about what goes into creating a novel, and the story behind 'A Passage to India' is especially interesting.
cliche easy finding freedom future perhaps though weight
Perhaps cliche is nothing more than the weight of the past pinning down your mind. In this sense, imaginative freedom is a way of finding the future, though it isn't so easy to do.
composed good helps serene state yoga
Yoga helps me with a composed and serene state of mind, which is good for writing.
fullest human interests nature takes
Literature at its fullest takes human nature as its theme. That's the kind of writing that interests me.
bound buy fountain notebooks work
I work by hand, with a fountain pen, in bound notebooks I buy in India.
apartheid gift looking writers
While apartheid was in operation, the set-up was a gift for writers if you were looking for a big theme.
directly experience few society traveling zones
Traveling is one of few zones of experience where you are not directly plugged into the world around you. You're not part of the society you're passing through.
deeper goes mere perceive politics psyche south writers younger
Rian Malan was one of the first younger writers to perceive and write about a darkness in the South African psyche that goes deeper than mere politics. To some extent, that's my territory, too.
against bump events fiction form measured persuade readers whether work writers
One of the questions writers bump up against in their work, whether they know it or not, is about lying. Because fiction is a form of deceit, and one's abilities are measured by how convincingly one can persuade readers that these events really happened.
almost last nine passage periods stuck writers
Most writers battle with periods of being blocked; it's almost an occupational hazard. But in the writing of his last and greatest novel, 'A Passage to India,' E. M. Forster got stuck for nine years.
centre ended hoping interest work
I first went to India because of my interest in yoga, hoping to go to the Iyengar Centre in Pune for a while. That didn't work out, but I ended up on a beach in Goa, writing.
events expected explain logical mysterious novels reach remain ultimately
It's expected of novels that they should explain the world and create the illusion that things are ultimately logical and coherent. But that's not what I see around me. Often, events remain mysterious and unresolved, and our emotions reach no catharsis.
assumption begin certain hard rule work written
I try to get going early, on the assumption that the way you begin your day is the way you continue. But certain books only want to be written at night, so there's no hard rule where work is concerned.