magisterial, heart-stopping novel - Nat Segnit ― Times Literary SupplementĪ complex, ambitious and brilliant work - one that provides Galgut's fullest exploration yet of the poisonous legacy of apartheid. The Promise functions as a spare but thoroughly satisfying parable, the decline of the Swarts into moral degeneracy and death tracing the forsaken promises of the post-apartheid era, from early hope to the contemporary realities of corruption and racial enmity.
a book that answers the question "what is a novel for?" With a simple: "This!" - John Self ― The Times This is so obviously one of the best novels of the year. style is quiet but the book feels bursting with life because of all the of all the off-page, between-times details he hints at. Galgut seems to deliver effortlessly.there's nothing he can't do. Galgut deploys every trick in the book he's heart-swellingly attentive to emotional complexity. ‘The most important book of the last ten years’ Edmund White Confident, deft and quietly powerful, The Promise is literary fiction at its finest.
In this story of a diminished family, sharp and tender emotional truths hit home. And as the country moves from old deep divisions to its new so-called fairer society, the lost promise of more than just one family hovers behind the novel’s title. The narrator’s eye shifts and blinks: moving fluidly between characters, flying into their dreams deliciously lethal in its observation. After years of service, Salome was promised her own house, her own land… yet somehow, as each decade passes, that promise remains unfulfilled. The younger generation, Anton and Amor, detest everything the family stand for - not least the failed promise to the Black woman who has worked for them her whole life. The Swarts are gathering for Ma’s funeral. The Promise charts the crash and burn of a white South African family, living on a farm outside Pretoria. A masterpiece of a family in crisis from twice Booker-shortlisted author Damon Galgut
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