In the running

We chat to South African authors Karen Jennings and Damon Galgut about their Booker Prize nominations

- JANE VORSTER

IT FELT like such a let-down: she’d poured her heart into writing her new novel, An Island, and yet after months on the shelves it had probably sold fewer than 100 copies.

But late last month something happened to make the whole world aware of Karen Jennings’ labour or love: it was chosen for the Booker Prize longlist.

This means the South African is going up against 12 other authors, including big names like Kazuo Ishiguro, in one of the world’s most prestigious literary contests.

“There’s no way of speaking of my feelings that’s not clichéd,” Karen tells us from São Paulo in Brazil where she lives. “I was struck dumb. I couldn’t believe it. I felt sick. It came as such a shock that I haven’t really been able to feel happy about it.”

She was able to write her book, which focuses on an encounter between an aged lighthouse keeper on an island off the coast of southern Africa and a young man who washes up on the shore, thanks to a scholarship she received from the Miles Morland Foundation in 2016.

“The idea for An Island came to me during an afternoon nap at a writers’ residency in Denmark in 2015,” she says.