K.J.Chapman has not been paid for this review. The opinions expressed here are those of K.J.Chapman and no other parties.Īll books reviewed on this blog have been read by K.J.Chapman. I was hoping for more of a climax or pivotal moment for Patrick, but that didn’t take away from the story. The ending was anti-climatic, and kind of just…was an end, if that makes sense. The dialogue was on point throughout the whole novel, recounted in Patrick’s slightly detached POV. ‘Maybe somewhere in space light has preserved the image of that moment, suspended and infinite.’ I was continuously in awe of Galgut’s simplistic, yet impactual descriptions and prose. The story starts with Patrick and his mother heading to Namibia for the first democratic elections, and jumps from present time to his time in the war. The narrative shows Patrick’s struggle with his identity, whilst highlighting an important historical moment in Africa. He had a breakdown after a soldier he loved was killed in combat, and now, after an honourable discharge, he has to start his life again with sexual orientation confusion, a promiscuous mother, and her Namibian, SWAPO activist lover. Patrick is a white South African who had been drafted into the South African army to fight at the border of Namibia in the 1980’s a war he never believed in. The Beautiful Screaming of Pigs: Author: Damon Galgut: Edition: reprint, revised: Publisher: Atlantic Books, 2006: Original from: the University of Michigan: Digitized: May 29, 2008: ISBN. With the country poised to change forever, Patrick is forced to revisit his past and scale the wall that he has built around his painful memories of love and war, and loss. His next novel, The Quarry (1995), was made into a. Now, during the first free elections, Patrick has returned to the country he defended the place where he fell in love for the first and only time. His novel The Beautiful Screaming of Pigs (1991) won the Central News Agency Literary Award in 1992. The Beautiful Screaming of Pigs by Damon Galgut 3.5/5īlurb: A year ago Patrick Winter was in Namibia completing his military service.

The beautiful screaming of pigs