Awards
Staff Pick
Winner of the Booker Prize in 2021, this is a powerful, concise piece of literature. It's the story of a troubled family in troubled South Africa. The writing is lovely.
Recommended by Nan S. Recommended By Nan S., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
WINNER OF THE 2021 BOOKER PRIZE
A NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS' CHOICE
On her deathbed, Rachel Swart makes a promise to Salome, the family's Black maid. This promise will divide the family — especially her children: Anton, the golden boy; Astrid, whose beauty is her power; and the youngest, Amor, whose life is shaped by feelings of guilt.
Reunited by four funerals over thirty years, the dwindling Swart family remains haunted by the unmet promise, just as their country is haunted by its own failures. The Promise is an epic South African drama that unfurls against the unrelenting march of history, sure to leave its readers transformed.
"Simply: you must read it." —Claire Messud, Harper's Magazine
★ "This tour-de-force unleashes a searing portrait of a damaged family and a troubled country in need of healing." —Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
Review
"Galgut extends his extraordinary corpus with a rich story of family, history, and grief." Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)
Review
"Galgut's compelling new novel blends characters and history and intricate themes to reveal the devastating impacts of white privilege and institutional racism….The Promise is timely, relevant, and thematically significant." Booklist (Starred Review)
Review
"The unusual narrative style balances a kind of Faulknerian exuberance with a Nabokovian precision and is a testament to the flourishing of the novel in the 21st century. The novel can best be summed up in the question: Does true justice exist in the world — and if so, what might that look like? This novel's way of tackling this question makes it an accomplishment and truly deserving of its place on the shortlist." Chigozie Obioma, 2021 Booker Prize judge and author of The Fisherman and An Orchestra of Minorities
Review
"The Promise is close to a folk tale or the retelling of a myth about fate and loss....The story has an astonishing sense of depth, as though the characters were imagined over time, with slow tender care." Colm Tóibín, author of Brooklyn
Review
"The Promise is the most important book of the last ten years." Edmund White, author of A Boy's Own Story and A Saint from Texas
Review
"Time and again in Mr. Galgut's fiction, South Africa materializes, vast, astonishing, resonant. And on this vastness, he stages intimate dramas that have the force of ancient myth." Anna Mundow, Wall Street Journal
Review
"If there is a posterity, Galgut will be seen as one of the great literary triumphs of South Africa's transition...in every way the equal of J. M. Coetzee." Rian Malan, author of My Traitor's Heart
Review
"The novel's beautifully peculiar narration aerates and complicates this fatal family fable, and turns plot into deep meditation....Galgut is wonderfully, Woolfianly adept." James Wood, The New Yorker
Video
Watch the Powell’s virtual event with Damon Galgut and James Wood!
About the Author
Damon Galgut was born in Pretoria. His 2003 novel The Good Doctor won the Commonwealth Writers Prize (Africa Region) and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. In a Strange Room (Europa, 2010) was also shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. In 2013, Galgut was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives in Cape Town, South Africa.