The Promise by Damon Galgut

 

As this novel opens, a family has gathered after the death of the mother on a farm in South Africa.  Anton Swart is the oldest child and is a soldier in the Army.  Astrid, the middle child, is consumed with thoughts of her beauty and its effect on men while Amor, the youngest girl is living at boarding school.  She has always been the quiet one in the family, the one who disappears onto the land for hours at a time.  She is friends with the son of Salome, the family's maid and the woman who has helped raise her.  The last time she was home she heard her mother extract a promise from her father that he would give Salome the deed to the house she lives in on the farm.  

But that promise is not kept.  The country is in turmoil and Manie, the father, believes that giving his servant property will only make things more uncertain.  Those who came in and took the land from the natives are now uneasy, unsure what the future will hold and if those same natives will now take the land back from them.  Amor can't believe that her father would renege on the promise he made to her mother on her deathbed.

Over the coming years, the family slowly dies off.  At each death, Amor reminds those surviving of the promise but the house is never deeded over to Salome.  This has the effect of removing Amor further and further from those she grew up with.  She becomes a nurse in an HIV ward and spends her life serving others. 

This book won the Booker Prize in 2021.  It is a tale of white privilege and the interaction of what are seen as interlopers and those who were native to the land.  This was the time of apartheid in South Aftica and Galgut as a South African native is uniquely situated to explore this theme.  The family drifts apart over the years as each carves out a life that they think is best for them while the land endures and exists as always.  Amor is a character whose selflessness the reader will remember long after the book is done.  This book is recommended for literary fiction readers.