The Promise

Damon Galgut has been awarded the Booker Prize for his powerful novel, The Promise, which charts the crash and burn of a white South African family, living on a farm outside Pretoria.

The Swarts are gathering for Ma's funeral. 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. After years of service, Salome was promised her own house, her own land. Yet somehow, as each decade passes, that promise remains unfulfilled. And as the country moves from old deep divisions to a so-called fairer society, the lost promise of more than just one family hovers behind the novel's title.