NEW YORK, New York/May 15, 2013Damon Galgut, the author of such acclaimed novels as In a Strange Room (Europa 2011) and The Good Doctor (2003) – both finalists for the Booker Prize, will be today become an Honorary Foreign Member of The American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Galgut joins the American Honorary Member musician Bob Dylan, also inducted today. The Newly Elected Members of the academy being welcomed are writer Ward Just and artists Richard Tuttle and Terry Winters.

A citizen of South Africa, Galgut spends much of the year in Europe and India. His next book, scheduled for publication in the fall of 2014, is a biographical novel of the British author EM Forster (A Passage to India, Howards End, A Room With a View).

The American Academy of Arts and Letters is an honor society composed of 250 architects, composers, artists, and writers. The honor of election is considered the highest formal recognition of artistic merit in the United States.