Menu
€17.99
**WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE 2021**
Discover the powerful prizewinning story of a family in crisis.
‘Astonishing’ Colm Tóibìn
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.
The narrator’s eye shifts and blinks: moving fluidly between characters, flying into their dreams; deliciously lethal in its observation. And as the country moves from old deep divisions to its new so-called fairer society, the lost promise of more than just one family hovers behind the novel’s title.
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.
‘Gorgeous and pleasurable’ Tessa Hadley
‘The most important book of the last ten years’ Edmund White
‘Simply: you must read it’ Claire Messud
In stock
There is nothing unusual or remarkable about the Swart family, oh no, they resemble the family from the next farm and the one beyond that, just an ordinary bunch of white South Africans, and if you don’t believe it then listen to us speak. The many voices of ‘The Promise’ tell a story in four snapshots, each one centred on a family funeral, each one happening in a different decade. In the background, a different president is in power, and a different spirit hangs over the country, while in the foreground the family fights over what they call their farm, on a worthless piece of land outside Pretoria. Over large jumps in time, people get older, faces and laws and lives all change, while a brother and sister circle around a promise made long ago, and never kept.
| Weight | 0.303 kg |
|---|---|
| Dimensions | 21.6 × 13.5 × 2.2 cm |
| Author | |
| Publisher | |
| Imprint | |
| Cover | Paperback |
| Pages | 304 |
| Language | English |
| Edition | Export ed |
| Dewey | 823.92 (edition:23) |
| Readership | General – Trade / Code: K |
Can’t find the right book, why not give a gift card and let them find that special book.
If we don’t have the book you want, we will do our best to order it for you and often have it in a few days.
Get notified about new articles
