In store now! The Promise, by Damon Galgut
Damon Galgut’s stunning new novel charts the decline of a white family during South Africa’s transition out of apartheid, and asks urgent and pressing questions about the legacy of colonialism, and the trauma left in it’s wake.
The winner of this year’s Booker Prize, The Promise, begins in 1986, with the death of Rachel, a 40-year-old Jewish mother of three on a smallholding outside Pretoria. The drama of the novel turns on a promise that her Afrikaner husband, Manie, made to her before she died, overheard by their youngest daughter, Amor: that Manie would give their black maid, Salome, the deeds to the annexe she occupies. Now that Rachel is dead, Manie has apparently forgotten and doesn’t care to be reminded. Nor does his bigoted family, who regard Amor’s stubborn insistence that Salome should own her home as the kind of talk that “now appears to have infected the whole country”.
Literary fiction at it’s finest, from an author who has proven time and again the thematic potency of their work, and the potential that great fiction has for healing deep wounds.
Order your copy today directly through October Books or buy online through our bookshop store and we’ll get a commission on your purchase.
The Promise by Damon Galgut
Hardback £16.99
Haunted by an unmet promise, the Swart family loses touch after the death of their matriarch. Adrift, the lives of the three siblings move separately through the uncharted waters of South Africa; Anton, the golden boy who bitterly resents his life’s unfulfilled potential; Astrid, whose beauty is her power; and the youngest, Amor, whose life is shaped by a nebulous feeling of guilt.
Reunited by four funerals over three decades, the dwindling family reflects the atmosphere of its country—an atmosphere of resentment, renewal, and, ultimately, hope. The Promise is an epic drama that unfurls against the unrelenting march of national history, sure to please current fans and attract many new ones.
Order your copy today directly from October Books or buy online through our bookshop store and we’ll get commission on your purchase.
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