‘The Promise’ by Damon Galgut
The novel that won the 2021 Booker Prize this week
Published 05.11.21, 08:59 AM
South African playwright and novelist Damon Galgut’s The Promise has been awarded the Booker Prize this year, in a victory that is hardly surprising. Touted a “tour de force” by Booker jury chair Maya Jassanoff, and emerging as a clear favourite with the bookies in the run-up to the winner announcement, the novel chronicles the story of a white family and their help living in Pretoria, South Africa, during the Apartheid era.
Salome, the black help of the Swarts family, owing to her faithful service, is promised her own house and land by her employers. However, as South Africa begins its transition from the racist Apartheid regime, “the promise” becomes a casualty of the unrest steadily gathering momentum.
Despite its serious setting, The Promise often catches the reader off-guard with its unexpected moments of humour and wit, juxtaposed against Galgut’s keen insights into the Apartheid years. The result is a literary work that is not only powerful, but also of much historical significance.
After Nadine Gordimer and J.M. Coetzee, Damon Galgut becomes the third author from South Africa to have won the Booker Prize. The Promise is the ninth novel by Galgut, who was shortlisted for the Booker Prize twice previously — in 2003 for The Good Doctor and in 2010 for In a Strange Room.
- Upasya Bhowal
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