Entering Galgut’s strange room

‘He has no house.’ Volislav Jakic’s epigraph opens In a Strange Room, Damon Galgut’s acclaimed novel. Donne’s ‘No man is an island’ would have served just as well. This is the story of one rootless man, Damon, and his fear of commitment.

Ostensibly, travel is Galgut’s subject. Hope and desire are thwarted by chance and choice on the road. But, as Galgut is fond of saying, memory is fiction. With the globe at his disposal, Galgut explores how memory is adopted or discarded to mitigate or exaggerate moments of euphoria, grief and regret; and hints at the influence of landscape on memory. Africa – its beauty and squalor, promise and threat – is the book’s most visited landscape, inspiring some of the most evocative description of time and place I’ve ever read.

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The book is a triptych of three short stories titled: Power, Love and Guardian.