W: Damon congratulations first of all on winning the Booker Prize. You have mentioned that you had
a first attempt at this book and then you went away to write some film scripts and it was that
that helped you to come back and finish this book. Could you tell us a little bit about
that because it's really clear when you read the book there is this sort of filmic feel to it.
DG: Yeah, it was something I was offered. It's not you know something I regularly do, breaking away
to write a film script or two, it came at the right time for me personally because I needed
money and also creatively because I... the least important thing in a film script is the language.
Basically the actors will change your words and no one has respect for your immortal dialogue so
it's very freeing in that respect. But it was freeing in another respect for me because when
I returned to the novel the kind of rather stodgy approach that I'd been taking until then sort of
fell away and I saw what could be done narratively if continue to use the logic of film. So basically
you know not to overstress the point but the narrator of the book behaved like a camera would
and I saw that you could swoop around from one scene to another, one character to another,
that you could cut you know even from one location to the next and yeah it gave me a freedom in the
narration that had been sorely lacking until then. So it was a revelation and a liberation
W: It's an amazing experience for the reader because you are constantly surprised, you're
always asking questions because you're wondering where you are, whose viewpoint you're getting
and also who this is being addressed to and so there are sort of many things about the narration
of this book which I find really fascinating but also the narrative voice is quite distinctive and
it feels impish at times, it's got a sense of humour to it and I was really intrigued to know
who it might be who's speaking and also who they're speaking to.
DG: Well I mean of course I'm the person behind the voice so you know effectively it's me speaking
but obviously I'm playing a game with that. You know it seems to me that every story is
told by somebody and whereas you know it's sort of an expected part of the technique in
the well-made novel that you make your narrator somewhat invisible like a pane of glass through
which the reader's supposed to be looking at the action in this case I try to draw the reader's
attention to the fact that there is a narrator and that the entire exercise is artificial. So,
you know to answer the second part of your question the narrator is not a steady presence.
At different times I had the sense that the narrator was almost a different person or
sometimes a non-person addressing the human beings in this drama.
But that the narrator was also not only speaking about or to the characters in the story but
sometimes to the reader. There's certain key points in the book where the the narrator as it
were wheels around and sticks a finger out of the page at the reader and says something accusing.
Hopefully you know at certain key moments to make the reader feel
uncomfortable and implicated in what's going on.
W: You've picked these
periods of time, each section of the book is separated by roughly 10 years, were you very
careful presumably about picking which periods of time you were going to be setting the novel?
DG: Well yeah once I decided that you know it wasn't going to be just about this family and
the funerals but if you widen the window a little bit you you would see something of South Africa
in the background, once I made that decision it sort of became crucial to pick the right moment.
Because each decade has its own sort of historical ethos if you like and I wanted to sort of capture
that without naming political parties or being dry and dusty. So for example in the Mandela era
the the rugby world cup, the match that we won was, it was an obvious candidate as a kind of
symbolic moment because it encapsulated how the nation felt in a sort of unreal and heady way.
You know it was part of the trick of it because I also maybe less visibly had to
find an incident for each section that took place in a different season.
It may not, as I said, be obvious to a reader but you know I'm using four
different seasons as a backdrop also, to kind of convey the passage of time which I found
or at least I hope I found multiple ways to sort of evoke in the writing.
W: The promise of the title is a promise made by one character to give the the house and the land
that their black servant has been living in, to them, on her passing and it's a promise which is
neglected through the decades. And of course the book seems to me to be very much about
land and ownership and property and who owns it and that's something that has
been changing throughout South African history and it's still a big bone of contention now?
DG: Oh it's a huge flash point, yeah, it's become a big ideological rallying point for certain
populist elements in the political landscape right now. I mean for obvious reasons because
it's an issue that goes right back to the arrival of the first white settlers in South Africa.
You know land was effectively taken from people who were already living on it,
you know with a sort of careless impunity that suggested nobody was there
um and you know the resulting conflict you could say underpins all of South African
history one way or another. And it's not resolved, not settled. So yeah it was a sort of obvious
theme and subject to try to weave through this particular story which I hope
you know in a much more immediate way centres on the family and their travails.
W: You've spoken about how the character of Salome, the black servant,
is purposefully left almost silent throughout the book, their voice
unheard. It's a point made very clearly in the book and it really does hit home but I
wonder were you ever worried about doing that, about making that character virtually silent?
DG: Well sure. I mean it's obviously going to be questioned and it was something I
sat with for a while I mean I did have this idea that maybe I would withhold
her inner life until right at the end and then sort of open the gates and let it flood out as
it were. For better or for worse I decided not to go that route but to use one of those
moments where the narrator turns and points a finger at the reader and says you know if you
don't know about this person perhaps it's because you didn't care to know, you didn't care to ask.
Which is certainly an accusation that could be made against white South Africans.
I guess I was speaking more to them in that instant than to perhaps the British readers.
W: It also strikes me that the the book is
has a very corporeal focus, i'm going to call it. There is so much stuff in here about the human
body. Obviously we attend four funerals and we learn something about the deaths of the people but
also there are elements of talking about people ageing, people having or not having children
and looking back at your work this is something that you have sort of covered before. Is it fair
for me to say that you do seem very interested in the human body and how it changes over time?
DG: I mean we all have one and we're all you know kind of bound to it. I was struck actually
by something from one of Christopher Hitchens' memoirs where he said you know it's not true that
one has a body, one is a body. But you know the the underlying theme of this book is ageing and
mortality, you know, the terminus very obviously with the funerals is death. And that means
the end of the body, the body shutting down. So perhaps in this book more than in others
the body is much more present and I keep I guess drawing the reader's attention to its functions
and its failings. Yeah it's certainly something I'm more and more aware of as I get older.
W: And finally, the Booker. Obviously you have been shortlisted twice before,
some would say that there was an inevitability about you winning it eventually but I'm sure
it never felt like that to you. But also you've spoken about this sort of the cruel thing that
can happen with the Booker which is that you feel very much like a winner until of course
the winner is announced and then the other short listees disappear in a mist and having experienced
that twice I wonder how it now feels of course to to be that final winner at the end of it all.
DG: Well I mean quite honestly I was braced for it to happen again I'd made all sorts of plans for
you know people I was going to see after the 3rd and suddenly I just don't have time to see them!
Of course it feels fantastic. You know it's a great position to be in certainly. It didn't seem
to me an inevitable result ever, I'm still somewhat stunned to be honest. I mean I'm
still coming to terms with it because it is without doubt a life and career changing event but
the full implications of that are not yet clear!
W: Well Damon it's a fantastic book, I had so much pleasure in reading it and
even more pleasure in talking to you about it so thank you so much.
DG: Thank you, thanks.