The Promise by Damon Galgut

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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 white South Africans, and if
you don’t believe it then listen to us speak…

The many voices of The Promise tell a story in four snapshots, each one centered on a family funeral, each one happening in a different decade as a family fights over what they call their farm, on a worthless piece of land outside Pretoria. Over large jumps in time, people get older, faces and laws and lives all change, while a brother and sister circle around a promise made long ago, and never kept…

An extraordinary novel, filmic in its conception… A vital contribution to SA literature that stayed with me long after I finished reading it ~ Mervyn