Review of THE PROMISE by Damon Galgut

 4 Stars

Though this is my first encounter with this South African writer, two of his previous novels were nominated for the Booker Prize and this book is the 2021 winner of that prestigious award.

The book focuses on various members of a white Afrikaans family living on a farm near Pretoria.  It begins in 1986 with the death of Rachel Swart, the matriarch.  Her 13-year-old daughter Amor overhears Rachel extracting a promise from her husband Manie to make Salome, their black domestic servant, owner of the small house in which she lives.  Manie ignores his promise and Amor faces objections from her older siblings, Astrid and Anton. 

There are four sections (spring of 1986, winter of 1995, autumn of 2004, and summer of 2018), each including the death of a Swart family member.  (Ironically, Swart in Afrikaans means Black.)  The four funerals coincide with an important event in South African history. 

The narration of the novel immediately gets the reader’s attention.   The third-person narrator flows through the consciousness of characters, often changing mid-paragraph.  For instance, in a description of a man being hit by a stone thrown at him, the narrator enters the man’s mind mid-sentence and switches to first person:  “What wasn’t weightless is the stone that suddenly comes at him, hurled from the hand of a man who leans out of the scene, bloodshot eyes fixed only on me.”  The narrator even enters the mind of jackals:  “It is necessary to renew their markings, using bodily juices, to lay down the border.  Beyond here is us.”  The narrator corrects himself:  “In the hearse, I mean the house, a certain unspoken fear has ebbed.”  Occasionally, the narrator comments on someone’s thoughts:  “So people will pity themselves, soaked in sadness over what they’ve lost, with no awareness of other losses close to hand that they have brought themselves.”  Strange observations are made:  “The three toilets downstairs, unused to such traffic, have between them flushed twenty-seven times, carrying away nine point eight litres of urine, five point two litres of shit, one stomachful of regurgitated food and five millilitres of sperm.”  Sometimes the reader is addressed:  “She dislikes her whole body, as many of you do.” 

Interestingly, the one person whose inner life is not revealed is Salome.  Just as she is denied ownership of her home, she is not given a voice.  Her presence is often not noticed by others, unless her help is required.  One woman comments about the black workers:  “they’re always around, like ghosts, you almost don’t notice them.”  Obviously, Salome represents the subjugated majority of non-whites. 

The title refers to the promise Rachel asked Manie to make, a promise which long goes unfulfilled.  When steps are finally taken to give Salome the property, it may be too late because of a prior historical claim to the land.  Certainly Salome’s son does not react with gratitude.  Furthermore, the lives of many of the people do not match their initial promise:  one succumbs to alcohol, another suffers from bulimia, and another is expelled from school. 

The moral failings and broken promise of the Swart family can be interpreted as an allegory for post-apartheid South Africa and the broken promises made to blacks.  Mandela’s promise of” a rainbow nation at peace with itself and the world” is unfulfilled because of greed, corruption, and violence.  Just as the promise made to Salome is unfulfilled as each decade passes, so is the promise of the country unfulfilled.  Everyone’s life is warped by the bitter legacy of apartheid:  “For there is nothing unusual or remarkable about the Swart family, oh no, they resemble the family from the next farm and the one beyond that, just an ordinary bunch of South Africans, and if you don’t believe it then listen to us speak. . . . Something rusted and rain-stained and dented in the soul, and it comes through in the voice.”

Perhaps the one glimmer of hope is Amor whose name means love.  She serves as the conscience of the family, vehemently arguing against the denial or deferment of Salome’s inheritance.  She refuses her own inheritance and distances herself from the family.  She devotes her life to selflessly caring for others.  But her journey, like her country’s journey to a better future, is not complete so she moves forward “step by step, towards whatever it is that happens next.”

I certainly understand why this book was chosen for the Booker Prize.  It has layers upon layers; in its portrayal of the effects of white privilege and institutionalized racism, the book is relevant to other nations besides South Africa.