Damon Galgut was born in Pretoria in 1963. He wrote his first novel, A Sinless Season, when he was seventeen. His other books include Small Circle of Beings, The Beautiful Screaming of Pigs, The Quarry, The Good Doctor, The Impostor and In A Strange Room. The Good Doctor was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and the Dublin/IMPAC Award, The Impostor was also shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and In a Strange Room was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. He lives in Cape Town.
Could well be one of the finest literary works published this year... Damon Galgut, among the finest living writers, has not only given life to a quiet enigma who suffered in love but looked at the inspiration and need that helped that enigma write six major novels. * Irish Times * Beautifully written and utterly compelling... A vivid, moving account of the man that makes you want to read all his books again. * The Times * Galgut is extremely good on Forster's anxieties, his loneliness, his unworldliness... The portrait is beautifully nuanced, a mixture of bold, colourful strokes and delicate little flicks of the brush. * Sunday Times * With insight and seemingly effortless fluidity, Mr Galgut has written a beautiful, and at times funny, novel that movingly captures the duality of one of Britain's most thoughtful authors. * Economist * It is a project to which Galgut, whose fiction has often covered the terrain of love, race and politics, seems perfectly suited as a writer... A remarkable, lyrical tribute. * Guardian * Galgut has so seamlessly incorporated Forster's diaries, letters and novels into his narrative that it is often hard to tell which novelist is which. * Daily Telegraph * A masterly piece of fiction. Delicate and detailed. * Daily Mail * A beautifully imagined piece, getting deep inside the mind of a major English novelist. * Mail on Sunday * Galgut's gifts - of phrasing, of structure, of perception - are on faultless form in these pages... Arctic Summer is a masterpiece. * Sunday Business Post * How apt that Arctic Summer, a chronicle of a writer's longest journey to complete his masterpiece, also happens to be Galgut's finest book to date. * The Herald (Scotland) * Preoccupied by varieties of sadness - but is so crisply written, with a deceptive simplicity and directness, that it feels full of affirmations -- Summer picks * Guardian * His [E M Forster's] plight is beautifully captured by Damon Galgut in this plangent novel, rich in period detail... Forster springs four-square from the page. * Books of the Year, Daily Mail * With insight and seemingly effortless fluidity, Damon Galgut has written a beautiful and funny book that movingly captures the duality of E.M. Forster, one of Britain's most thoughtful novelists. * The Economist, Books of the Year * A compelling account of Forster's writing and of his sexual preoccupations and longings. * Observer * [A] perfectly judged and sensitively written novel * Scotland on Sunday *