Damon Galgut
Damon Galgut
Damon Galgutis an award-winning South African playwright and novelist...
NationalitySouth African
ProfessionPlaywright
Date of Birth12 November 1963
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I think there's something very dark in the South African psyche. I think we live a lot of the time in a state of a very low-grade civil war; the levels of violence in South Africa are extremely high. In a way, the civil war that never happened is being played out in a covert way, so we live with a lot of very ugly things.
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While apartheid was in operation, the set-up was a gift for writers if you were looking for a big theme.
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Yoga helps me with a composed and serene state of mind, which is good for writing.
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I wrote large chunks of 'The Impostor' and 'The Good Doctor' on a beach in Goa.
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Stationery gets me excited because it has an individual character, unlike computers, which may be convenient but are generic and bland.
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Literature at its fullest takes human nature as its theme. That's the kind of writing that interests me.
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I work by hand, with a fountain pen, in bound notebooks I buy in India.
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Traveling is one of few zones of experience where you are not directly plugged into the world around you. You're not part of the society you're passing through.
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Writing is very good for household tasks. Because you'd rather fix a dripping tap or paint an old wall - you'd rather do almost anything than sit and write. I have to reach a point of obsession in order to write, and so I find starting a book incredibly difficult.
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Writing is not like acting, where you can pull these little stunts that create a particular effect. Words are all it is about, and the way you use words has to be individual and particular to you.
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Unrequited affection is very painful for the lover, but it can have unexpected, creative consequences.
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I go for long walks in Newlands Forest in Cape Town, and I go to the Turkish baths on Sunday mornings.
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I first went to India because of my interest in yoga, hoping to go to the Iyengar Centre in Pune for a while. That didn't work out, but I ended up on a beach in Goa, writing.
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Rian Malan was one of the first younger writers to perceive and write about a darkness in the South African psyche that goes deeper than mere politics. To some extent, that's my territory, too.