BookLife Review: The Promise, by Damon Galgut

South Africa, post-apartheid, siblings, promise, greed, guilt, betrayal, Man Booker Prize 2021

The 2021 Man Booker Prize winner, Damon Galgut (@damongalgut) crafted The Promise, a story set in post-apartheid South Africa surrounding three perfectly imperfect wounded white South African siblings. The siblings’ collective dysfunction forms a vortex of detritus that whorls around an unkept promise about the distribution of their estate made to their dying mother by their father and witnessed by the youngest of them. Greed, guilt, unfulfilled potential and dishonesty fester as the siblings disperse and reconvene over a series of funerals.

Death becomes a character in its own right, alongside with the simmering racial discontent and injustice that has underpinned the country for decades. There is a thread of reconciliation and justice to be mined from the family that allows a blade of hope to remain.

Rich prose and extraordinarily well-crafted prose make this story gutting and compelling.