Damon Galgut has won this year’s Man Booker Prize with his novel The Promise. The novel is set near Pretoria, South Africa, and tells the story of three siblings who lose touch after the death of their matriarch.
A taut and menacing novel that charts the crash and burn of an Afrikaans family, the Swarts. Punctuated by funerals that bring the ever-diminishing family together, each of the four parts opens with a death and a new decade.
The characterisations are razor sharp, the dialogue dramatic, the action gripping. As we traverse the decades, Damon interweaves the story of a disappointed nation from apartheid to Jacob Zuma.