The Quarry

Booker Prize winner Damon Galgut's devastating 1995 novel on guilt and the pursuit of justice

Give yourself up. Whatever you've done. They'll find you. In the end.

A man with no name staggers down a lonely stretch of road that cuts through the simmering veld of rural South Africa. He is exhausted and hungry yet dives for the long grass whenever cars approach. He is on the run.

When a minister on his way to a new congregation offers help - at a price - the fugitive's desperation boils over. Stealing the minister's identity, he is successfully taken in by the township. But when a body is discovered in a nearby quarry, and the local police captain's suspicions grow, the hunt reignites with devastating consequences.

'One of South Africa's great literary voices' Economist

'Galgut's prose feels as if it's been fired through a crucible, burning away all the comfortable excess until only a hard, concentrated purity remains' Daily Telegraph