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The Promise (Galgut Novel)
''The Promise'' is a 2021 novel by South African novelist Damon Galgut, published in May 2021, by Umuzi, an imprint of Penguin Random House South Africa. It was published by Europa Editions in the US and by Chatto & Windus in the UK. The novel was awarded the 2021 Booker Prize, making Galgut the third South African to win the Prize. Plot ''The Promise'' is a family saga spanning four decades, each of which features a death in the family. It concerns the Afrikaner Swart family and their farm located outside Pretoria. The family consists of Manie, his wife Rachel, and their children Anton, Astrid, and Amor. In 1986, Rachel dies after a long illness. Before passing, she expresses her dying wish to Manie that their black domestic servant, Salome, be given ownership of the house in which she resides on the family's property. This promise, overheard by a young Amor, is made by Manie, but he claims no memory of having made it at the wake, and shows no intention of fulfilling it ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Damon Galgut
Damon Galgut (born 12 November 1963) is a South African novelist and playwright. He was awarded the 2021 Booker Prize for his novel '' The Promise'', having previously been shortlisted for the award in 2003 and 2010. Early life and education Galgut was born on 12 November 1963 in Pretoria, South Africa. His father was from a Jewish family and his mother converted to Judaism. At the age of six, he was diagnosed with lymphoma. Galgut was head boy of Pretoria Boys High School, matriculating in 1981. He then studied drama at the University of Cape Town. Literary career Galgut wrote his first novel, '' A Sinless Season'' (1982), when he was 17. His next book, a collection of short stories called ''Small Circle of Beings'' (1988), includes an eponymous novella that describes a mother's struggle with her son's illness. His novel ''The Beautiful Screaming of Pigs'' (1991) won the Central News Agency Literary Award in 1992. His next novel, ''The Quarry'' (1995), was made into a featu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Snakebite
A snakebite is an injury caused by the bite of a snake, especially a venomous snake. A common sign of a bite from a venomous snake is the presence of two puncture wounds from the animal's fangs. Sometimes venom injection from the bite may occur. This may result in redness, swelling, and severe pain at the area, which may take up to an hour to appear. Vomiting, blurred vision, tingling of the limbs, and sweating may result. Most bites are on the hands, arms, or legs. Fear following a bite is common with symptoms of a racing heart and feeling faint. The venom may cause bleeding, kidney failure, a severe allergic reaction, tissue death around the bite, or breathing problems. Bites may result in the loss of a limb or other chronic problems or even death. The outcome depends on the type of snake, the area of the body bitten, the amount of snake venom injected, the general health of the person bitten and whether or not anti-venom serum has been administered by a doctor in a ti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
First-person Narrative
A first-person narrative is a mode of storytelling in which a storyteller recounts events from their own point of view using the first person It may be narrated by a first-person protagonist (or other focal character), first-person re-teller, first-person witness, or first-person peripheral. A classic example of a first-person protagonist narrator is Charlotte Brontë's ''Jane Eyre'' (1847), in which the title character is also the narrator telling her own story, "I could not unlove him now, merely because I found that he had ceased to notice me". This device allows the audience to see the narrator's mind's eye view of the fictional universe, but it is limited to the narrator's experiences and awareness of the true state of affairs. In some stories, first-person narrators may relay dialogue with other characters or refer to information they heard from the other characters, in order to try to deliver a larger point of view. Other stories may switch the narrator to different cha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Guardian Media Group, owned by the Scott Trust. The trust was created in 1936 to "secure the financial and editorial independence of ''The Guardian'' in perpetuity and to safeguard the journalistic freedom and liberal values of ''The Guardian'' free from commercial or political interference". The trust was converted into a limited company in 2008, with a constitution written so as to maintain for ''The Guardian'' the same protections as were built into the structure of the Scott Trust by its creators. Profits are reinvested in journalism rather than distributed to owners or shareholders. It is considered a newspaper of record in the UK. The editor-in-chief Katharine Viner succeeded Alan Rusbridger in 2015. Since 2018, the paper's main news ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jon Day (writer)
Jon Day is a British writer, critic and academic. He teaches English at King's College London. His essays and reviews have appeared in the '' London Review of Books'', ''n+1'', the ''New York Review of Books,'' ''The Times Literary Supplement,'' and ''The Guardian''. He is also a regular fiction critic for ''The Daily Telegraph'' and the ''Financial Times'', and writes about art for ''Apollo'' magazine. Day's first book, ''Cyclogeography'', a philosophical memoir about the years he spent as a London bicycle courier Bicycle messengers (also known as bike or cycle couriers) are people who work for courier companies (also known as messenger companies) carrying and delivering items by bicycle. Bicycle messengers are most often found in the central business dist ..., was published in 2015 to critical acclaim. His second, ''Homing'', was published in 2019. He was a judge for the 2016 Man Booker Prize, and for the 2019 Wellcome Book Prize. References {{DEFAULTSORT:Day, Jon 21 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of the 20th century. Joyce's novel ''Ulysses'' (1922) is a landmark in which the episodes of Homer's ''Odyssey'' are paralleled in a variety of literary styles, particularly stream of consciousness. Other well-known works are the short-story collection ''Dubliners'' (1914), and the novels ''A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man'' (1916) and ''Finnegans Wake'' (1939). His other writings include three books of poetry, a play, letters, and occasional journalism. Joyce was born in Dublin into a middle-class family. He attended the Jesuit Clongowes Wood College in County Kildare, then, briefly, the Christian Brothers-run O'Connell School. Despite the chaotic family life imposed by his father's unpredictable finances, he excelled at the Jesuit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf (; ; 25 January 1882 28 March 1941) was an English writer, considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors and a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device. Woolf was born into an affluent household in South Kensington, London, the seventh child of Julia Prinsep Jackson and Leslie Stephen in a blended family of eight which included the modernist painter Vanessa Bell. She was home-schooled in English classics and Victorian literature from a young age. From 1897 to 1901, she attended the Ladies' Department of King's College London, where she studied classics and history and came into contact with early reformers of women's higher education and the women's rights movement. Encouraged by her father, Woolf began writing professionally in 1900. After her father's death in 1904, the Stephen family moved from Kensington to the more bohemian Bloomsbury, where, in conjunction with the brothers' intellectual friends, t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Faulkner
William Cuthbert Faulkner (; September 25, 1897 – July 6, 1962) was an American writer known for his novels and short stories set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, based on Lafayette County, Mississippi, where Faulkner spent most of his life. A Nobel Prize laureate, Faulkner is one of the most celebrated writers of American literature and is considered the greatest writer of Southern literature. Born in New Albany, Mississippi, Faulkner's family moved to Oxford, Mississippi when he was a young child. With the outbreak of World War I, he joined the Royal Canadian Air Force but did not serve in combat. Returning to Oxford, he attended the University of Mississippi for three semesters before dropping out. He moved to New Orleans, where he wrote his first novel '' Soldiers' Pay'' (1925). He went back to Oxford and wrote '' Sartoris'' (1927), his first work set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County. In 1929, he published ''The Sound and the Fury''. The following year, he ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Literary Modernism
Literary modernism, or modernist literature, originated in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and is characterized by a self-conscious break with traditional ways of writing, in both poetry and prose fiction writing. Modernism experimented with literary form and expression, as exemplified by Ezra Pound's maxim to "Make it new." This literary movement was driven by a conscious desire to overturn traditional modes of representation and express the new sensibilities of their time. The horrors of the First World War saw the prevailing assumptions about society reassessed, and much modernist writing engages with the technological advances and societal changes of modernity moving into the 20th century. Origins and precursors In the 1880s, increased attention was given to the idea that it was necessary to push aside previous norms entirely, instead of merely revising past knowledge in light of contemporary techniques. The theories of Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), and Ernst Mach (183 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Publishers Weekly
''Publishers Weekly'' (''PW'') is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers, and literary agents. Published continuously since 1872, it has carried the tagline, "The International News Magazine of Book Publishing and Bookselling". With 51 issues a year, the emphasis today is on book reviews. The magazine was founded by bibliographer Bibliography (from and ), as a discipline, is traditionally the academic study of books as physical, cultural objects; in this sense, it is also known as bibliology (from ). English author and bibliographer John Carter describes ''bibliography ... Frederick Leypoldt in the late 1860s, and had various titles until Leypoldt settled on the name ''The Publishers' Weekly'' (with an apostrophe) in 1872. The publication was a compilation of information about newly published books, collected from publishers and from other sources by Leypoldt, for an audience of booksellers. By 1876, ''The Publishers' Weekly ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alcoholism
Alcoholism is, broadly, any drinking of alcohol (drug), alcohol that results in significant Mental health, mental or physical health problems. Because there is disagreement on the definition of the word ''alcoholism'', it is not a recognized diagnostic entity. Predominant diagnostic classifications are alcohol use disorder (DSM-5) or alcohol dependence (ICD-11); these are defined in their respective sources. Excessive alcohol use can damage all organ systems, but it particularly affects the brain, heart, liver, pancreas and immune system. Alcoholism can result in mental illness, delirium tremens, Wernicke–Korsakoff syndrome, Heart arrhythmia, irregular heartbeat, an impaired immune response, liver cirrhosis and alcohol and cancer, increased cancer risk. Drinking during pregnancy can result in fetal alcohol spectrum disorders. Women are generally more sensitive than men to the harmful effects of alcohol, primarily due to their smaller body weight, lower capacity to metaboli ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Carjacking
Carjacking is a robbery in which the item taken over is a motor vehicle.Michael Cherbonneau, "Carjacking," in ''Encyclopedia of Social Problems'', Vol. 1 (SAGE, 2008: ed. Vincent N. Parrillo), pp. 110-11. In contrast to car theft, carjacking is usually in the presence and knowledge of the victim. A common crime in many places in the world, carjacking has been the subject of legislative responses, criminology studies, and prevention efforts. Commercial vehicles such as trucks and armored cars containing valuable cargo are common targets of carjacking attempts. Carjacking usually involves physical violence to the victim, or using the victim as a hostage. In rare cases, carjacking may also involve sexual assault. Etymology The word is a portmanteau of ''automobile, car'' and ''hijacking''. The term was coined by reporter Scott Bowles and editor EJ Mitchell with ''The Detroit News'' in 1991. ''The News'' first used the term in a report on the murder of Ruth Wahl, a 22-year-old Detroi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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