S African Damon Galgut wins Booker Prize for 'The Promise'

South African writer Damon Galgut has won the prestigious Booker Prize for fiction with his story of racism and reckoning “The Promise.”

LONDON -- South African writer Damon Galgut won the prestigious Booker Prize for fiction on Wednesday with “The Promise,” a novel about one white family’s reckoning with South Africa’s racist history.

Galgut had been British bookmakers’ runaway favorite to win the 50,000-pound ($69,000) prize with his story of a troubled Afrikaner family and its broken promise to a Black employee -- a tale that reflects bigger themes in South Africa’s transition from apartheid.

Galgut took the prize on his third time as a finalist, for a book the judges called a “tour de force.” He was previously shortlisted for “The Good Doctor” in 2003 and “In a Strange Room” in 2010, but lost both times.

“I’m sure he will be relieved that this time he’s the winner,” said historian Maya Jasanoff, who chaired the judging panel, though she said the shortlisted authors’ past work did not influence the five judges.