The Promise

The story is about a white South African family, living on a farm outside Pretoria. Mother Rachel on her deathbed, extracts the promise from her husband Manie that Salome, the familys black maid, will be given a house and a plot of land of her own. The youngest daughter, Amor, overhearing her mothers request, chooses her own way in life. When she meets up with her family at funeral gatherings, she reminds them of the promise. In the end she herself can fulfil the promise, but by then the political situation in South Africa has changed considerably and the promise has taken on a different dimension. As the story unfolds, the narrator takes the reader into the depths of the various characters' hearts. The novel contains beautiful metaphors that are a treat to the imagination.Damon Galgut won the Booker Prize 2021.