Author(s): Damon Galgut

General Fiction

Winner of the 2021 Booker Prize. A taut and menacing novel that charts the crash and burn of an Afrikaans family, the Swarts. Punctuated by funerals that bring the ever-diminishing family together, each of the four parts opens with a death and a new decade. The characterisations are razor sharp, the dialogue dramatic, the action gripping. As we traverse the decades, Damon interweaves the story of a disappointed nation from apartheid to Jacob Zuma.

Matilda Bookshop Review

Set against the backdrop of broken nation, South Africa, slowly, painfully but finally reintegrating, The Promise artfully plots the downfall of a single family in the course of one generation. The Swarts are wealthy landowners who have failed to make good on the dying wish of their mother, to give their long-term domestic employee full ownership of the very basic house she resides in on their land. Galgut’s skill is in exploring, and exposing, the largest possible themes, race, religion, decolonization and equity, through the lens of characters we often don’t respect. GAVIN