Damon Galgut

"Apartheid has fallen, see, we die right next to each other now, in intimate proximity. It’s just the living part we still have to work out."

This multilayered, rich and insightful Booker Prize shortlisted novel of an ordinary white South African family living in a farm outside of Johannesburg begins in 1986, during the end of the apartheid regime. Rachel Swart has died after a long illness, and her grieving husband and three teenage children convene with extended family to mourn her loss. show more Just before she died Amor, the introspective and sensitive 13 year old youngest member of the family, overhears a conversation that her parents have in their bedroom, in which Rachel expresses one last wish to her husband:

"Do you promise me, Manie?"
Holding on to him, skeleton hands grabbing, like in a horror film.
"Ja, I’ll do it."
"Because I really want her to have something. After everything she’s done."
"I understand," he says.
"Promise me you’ll do it. Say the words."
"I promise," Pa says, choked-sounding.

The "she" who Rachel is referring to is Salome, the longtime black housekeeper on the Swart farm, who is Rachel's age and one of her closest companions, although she is invisible and given little consideration by the rest of the Swart family, save for Amor. Although it is not overly mentioned Amor interprets her mother's deathbed wish as legally granting over the Lombard house, a rundown shack on the edge of the farm, to Salome, a property purchased years ago by Rachel's father to prevent it from being purchased by an Indian family. This promise could not be fulfilled, as blacks were not allowed to own property, and nothing more was said or done at that time.

The novel consists of four chronologically separate parts over four decades, each part corresponding to one of four members of the Swart family: Rachel, her husband Manie, and their two oldest children, Anton and Astrid. The two characters who are constantly present are Amor and Salome, who maintain a warm friendship despite their physical distance, in a changing South Africa where blacks and whites live uncomfortably alongside each other:

"But enough, we are the rainbow nation, which is to say it’s a mixed and motley and mongrel assembly in the church today, restive and ill at ease, like antagonistic elements from the periodic table."

The promise that Manie made to Rachel remains unfulfilled, which troubles only Salome and Amor, and it serves as a metaphor for the promise of true equality made to black South Africans after the end of apartheid, as whites continue to hold on to their valuable property, which they view as their birthright and something only to be shared with their descendants.

'The Promise' is a compelling look into the life of an ordinary white South African family during the waning years of apartheid and the years that followed, which also permits the reader with a glimpse of modern day South Africa, and relations between the two main races, which leaves out the sizable mixed race and Indian communities. I'm a fan of Damon Galgut's work, most notably his novels 'The Impostor', 'In a Strange Room', 'The Good Doctor' and 'Arctic Summer', but this is his best novel yet, and one that is worthy of this year's Booker Prize. show less

The story of five diverse and complicated members of an Afrikaner family, bridging the end of apartheid, and cleverly condensed into snapshots set around the funerals of four of them. At the heart of the story is the promise made by Manie Swart to his dying wife Rachel to give a house to their black servant Salome, the person who had shouldered the heavy burden of Rachel's care during her last illness. At each missed opportunity for realising the promise, the value of the gift and the show more difference it could make to Salome's life become progressively less, in what's presumably a complicated allegory of South Africa and the end of minority rule.

Galgut's writing is fresh and witty, and the main characters and the storyline are complex and surprisingly free from the obvious clichés the context would lead you to expect — some of the minor characters descend into caricature, though, especially the various priests, the undertaker, and the Random-Army-Buddy-who-keeps-popping-up, who perhaps have a bit too much of the Evelyn Waugh minor character about them.

A very interesting and quite moving book about the moral and intellectual failure of a culture. show less

Here is novel that is heartbreaking without being depressing. The writing weaves the characters’ lives together, tangles and untangles. As a reader, you cannot really tell how this was done, can’t see the seams. I like that in a book. I liked Damon Galgut’s omniscient narrator, who also influences the book’s reality when the occasion calls for it. The narrator is detached, sarcastic, and merciless (understandably) towards the characters, yet never misanthropic.

I really like the way Damon Galgut writes, and this novel was another excellent read for me. In the dying days of apartheid, Amor overhears her father (Manie) promise his dying wife that he will give the family maid the house she's been living in for decades. As the family drifts apart over time, Amor, the youngest sibling, is the only one who feels it essential to fulfill this promise. As the family drifts apart, the apartheid regime disintegrates, providing a rich context for the story, show more with promises both personal and national. Very well done, with strong characters. Each chapters focuses on one (mother, father, sister, brother) with Amor as the overarching thread. So sad, and touching and real. show less