The Promise

Winner of the Booker Prize: "This tour-de-force unleashes a searing portrait of a damaged family and a troubled country in need of healing." —Publishers Weekly, starred review

Haunted by an unmet promise, the Swart family loses touch after the death of their matriarch. Adrift, the lives of the three siblings move separately through the uncharted waters of South Africa; Anton, the golden boy who bitterly resents his life's unfulfilled potential; Astrid, whose beauty is her power; and the youngest, Amor, whose life is shaped by a nebulous feeling of guilt. Reunited by four funerals over three decades, the dwindling family reflects the atmosphere of its country—one of resentment, renewal, and, ultimately, hope. The Promise is an epic drama that unfurls against the unrelenting march of national history, sure to please current fans and attract many new ones.


"Simply: you must read it." —Claire Messud, Harper's Magazine

"A rich story of family, history, and grief." —Kirkus Reviews, starred review


"Timely, relevant, and thematically significant." —Booklist, starred review


"Galgut is wonderfully, Woolfianly adept." —James Wood, The New Yorker

"In comparison [to Coetzee], Galgut is a gleeful satirist, mordantly skewering his characters' fecklessness and hypocrisy." —Rand Richards Cooper, The New York Times Book Review

"Riveting . . . Galgut's most ambitious novel to date." —New York Review of Books


"An exceptional book, beautifully written with characters you come to care deeply about." —BBC


"The Promise is close to a folk tale or the retelling of a myth about fate and loss . . . The story has an astonishing sense of depth, as though the characters were imagined over time, with slow tender care." —Colm Tóibín, New York Times–bestselling author of Brooklyn