Cart
Free Shipping in the UK
Proud to be B-Corp

The Promise Damon Galgut

The Promise By Damon Galgut

The Promise by Damon Galgut


£3.50
New RRP £16.99
Condition - Very Good
40+ in stock

Summary

Discover the Booker Prize-shortlisted literary masterpiece of a family in crisis.

'Astonishing' Colm Toibin

The Promise
charts the crash and burn of a white South African family, living on a farm outside Pretoria.

The Promise Summary

The Promise: WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE 2021 by Damon Galgut

**WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE 2021**

'
A tour de force... A spectacular demonstration of how the novel can make us see and think afresh' Booker Judges 2021

Discover the powerful prizewinning story of a family in crisis.


The Promise
charts the crash and burn of a white South African family, living on a farm outside Pretoria. The Swarts are gathering for Ma's funeral. The younger generation, Anton and Amor, detest everything the family stand for - not least the failed promise to the Black woman who has worked for them her whole life. After years of service, Salome was promised her own house, her own land... yet somehow, as each decade passes, that promise remains unfulfilled.

In this story of a diminished family, sharp and tender emotional truths hit home. Confident, deft and quietly powerful, The Promise is literary fiction at its finest.


'Damon Galgut is the most worthy winner of the Booker Prize we've seen for many years...The book trembles in the hand with its political relevance' Rose Tremain, New Statesman

** A NEW STATESMAN , OBSERVER, GUARDIAN , SUNDAY TIMES AND i BOOK OF THE YEAR 2021**
**ONE OF THE DAILY TELEGRAPH'S 75 BEST BOOKS OF 2021**

'Astonishing' Colm T
oibin

'A masterpiece - one of the best books I have read in the past decade... A moving, brilliantly told family epic' Elizabeth Day


'This is so obviously one of the best novels of the year' The Times


'Utterly compelling' Patrick Gale

'Gorgeous and pleasurable' Tessa Hadley

The Promise Reviews

A remarkable tale of four generations of one South African family and of the country itself... No wonder it won the Booker * Observer, Books of the Year *
Vivid and suggestive, moving and often very funny * Daily Telegraph, Books of the Year *
Brilliant... Rarely have I had such a strong sense, while reading a novel, that I myself was there, in the room with the characters * Financial Times *
A dazzling feat of kaleidoscopic storytelling * The Times, Books of the Year *
Layered, clever...with a gripping story * Claire Fuller, Daily Mail, Books of the Year *
Stunning . . . Galgut deploys every trick in the book; he's heart-swellingly attentive to emotional complexity . . . -- Anthony Cummins * Observer *
Galgut seems to deliver effortlessly...there's nothing he can't do... [his] style is quiet but the book feels bursting with life because of all the of all the off-page, between-times details he hints at... This is so obviously one of the best novels of the year... a book that answers the question what is a novel for? With a simple: This! -- John Self * The Times *
The Promise functions as a spare but thoroughly satisfying parable, the decline of the Swarts into moral degeneracy and death tracing the forsaken promises of the post-apartheid era, from early hope to the contemporary realities of corruption and racial enmity . . . [a] magisterial, heart-stopping novel -- Nat Segnit * Times Literary Supplement *
A complex, ambitious and brilliant work - one that provides Galgut's fullest exploration yet of the poisonous legacy of apartheid . . . Galgut describes his characters with rare assurance and skill, conjuring them to life in a narrative voice that moves restlessly from character to character . . . Rarely have I had such a strong sense, while reading a novel, that I myself was there, in the room with the characters -- William Skidelsky * Financial Times *
The Promise is fully rooted in contemporary South Africa, but the novel's weather moves into the elemental while attending also to the daily, the detailed and the personal. The book is close to a folktale or the retelling of a myth about fate and loss, about three siblings and land, a promise made and broken. The story has an astonishing sense of depth, as though the characters were imagined over time, with slow tender care -- Colm Toibin
Damon Galgut's The Promise is about an unfulfilled but promising life and about the repeatedly broken promises by a white family to a black household worker. With unostentatious virtuosity Galgut - one of the world's great writers - enters the minds of all his characters, rich or poor, white or black, male or female, even the thoughts of a homeless man beset by visions. The language has a Flaubertian clarity and the intimate knowledge of the family is matched by an authoritative understanding of South Africa's complex history. This is the most important book of the last ten years -- Edmund White
Remarkable . . . The Promise suggests that the demands of history and the answering cry of the novel can still powerfully converge . . . the novel's beautifully peculiar narration aerates and complicates this fatal family fable, and turns plot into deep meditation . . . Galgut is wonderfully, Woolfianly adept at moving quickly between characters' thoughts -- James Wood * New Yorker *
The Promise is a gorgeous and pleasurable novel, with an imaginative heft to match Galgut's fellow South African writers Gordimer, Coetzee and Brink. It's richly evocative of the land and its people, and reports on a new South Africa without fake moralising; it made me laugh, too. Dreamlike yet so solidly well-made, The Promise has lived on inside my head, unsettling and troubling me -- Tessa Hadley
The Promise by Damon Galgut is a masterpiece - one of the best books I have read in the past decade and definitely my book of the year so far. Galgut is a master of the form. His free-flowing prose moves effortlessly from inside one character's head to another and displays a wealth of compassion and insight from multiple perspectives. This novel is a moving, brilliantly-told family epic with political resonance which also manages in parts to be darkly comic. Phenomenally good -- Elizabeth Day
Superbly narrated, Galgut's book combines state-of-the-nation novel . . . with something like allegory or even Christian parable -- Phil Baker * Sunday Times *
A strange, skilful, spellbinding eighth novel . . . Galgut explores grief, despair and love in a way that feels ageless . . . By the end of this enormously enjoyable novel, our laughter has become complicity and farce become force -- David Isaacs * Literary Review *
A literary masterpiece of heart, soul and incorrupt wisdom. Galgut addresses conflict and reparation - both political and personal - with extraordinary skill, truthfulness and sensitivity. -- Sarah Hall
The Promise recalls the great achievements of modernism in its imagistic brilliance, its caustic disenchantment, its relentless research into the human. For formal innovation and moral seriousness, Damon Galgut is very nearly without peer. He is an essential writer -- Garth Greenwell
Galgut understands the complexities of the human heart which he reveals with the finest delicacy. This is an emotionally powerful and thrilling novel that haunts one long after it has been laid down -- Gabriel Byrne
A surprising number of novelists are very good; few are extraordinary. Like his compatriot J.M. Coetzee, the South African writer Damon Galgut is of this rare company . . . To praise the novel in its particulars - for its seriousness; for its balance of formal freedom and elegance; for its humor, its precision, its human truth - seems inadequate and partial. Simply: you must read it. Like other remarkable novels, it is uniquely itself, and greater than the sum of its parts. The Promise evokes, when you reach the final page, a profound interior shift that is all but physical. This, as an experience of art, happens only rarely, and is to be prized -- Claire Messud * Harpers US *

About Damon Galgut

DAMON GALGUT is the author of nine novels. He won the Booker Prize 2021 for The Promise, having been shortlisted for the prize twice before (The Good Doctor and In A Strange Room). He lives and works in Cape Town.

Additional information

GOR011636303
9781784744069
1784744069
The Promise: WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE 2021 by Damon Galgut
Used - Very Good
Hardback
Vintage Publishing
20210617
304
Winner of Booker Prize 2021 (UK)
Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
This is a used book - there is no escaping the fact it has been read by someone else and it will show signs of wear and previous use. Overall we expect it to be in very good condition, but if you are not entirely satisfied please get in touch with us

Customer Reviews - The Promise