This novel by Damon Galgut came out in 2021, and won the Booker Prize that same year. Most deservedly, I would say.

And if ever a book deserved to be listened to, rather than read, it's this one. The narration in my audio-version, by Peter Noble, was stunningly good, drawing on different accents, different pitches, and a wide repertoire of light and shade, to bring the narrative, with its ever-shifting point-of-view, shimmeringly alive.

It's a bleak book in many ways. Over the course of four funerals, we follow the life of the Afrikaner-descended Swart family, and in parallel, the wider life of the nation of South Africa. Neither entity can be said to have done that well, for all sorts of reasons. If the promise of the title were to be understood in general terms, then it has remained unfulfilled for both.

But the promise the title refers to is more specific. It is the one given by white patriarch Manie to his dying wife, Rachel. She asks him to make sure that some property -- the "Lombard place", a small house on the family farm -- is made over to Salome, the black domestic help, who has been so good to her over the course of her terminal illness. He promises.

Or, at least, that's what we're told happened. Because we hear this story from Amor, the youngest child, the one who was struck by lightning at the age of six, and has been, according to the rest of the family, a little strange ever since. She's the one who witnessed Rachel's request and Manie's acquiescence. But they were unaware of her presence: "They didn't see me, I was like a black woman to them." At one point in the novel, Amor seems to waver about whether that's what she heard. So there is that little doubt... Galgut constantly messes with what you think you know, but I guess a little doubt would be normal after all these years. Amor has always had the opposition of the rest of the family to contend with; they cannot even countenance the fulfilment of any such promise, and persistently reject her account. And you do always doubt your memory when you get to a certain age, it's true... But when she initially hears the promise, she immediately recounts it to someone else. That's always a good sign that something's authentic. And it would be a really odd thing for a child to make up...

So let's assume the promise was genuinely made.

Well, it's not fulfilled. At the time the promise was articulated, Salome could not even legally own land... Things start to change politically, but for decades, Manie, and then his inheritors, find reasons to not follow through on Rachel's wish. Amor keeps pushing, but her older siblings, Anton and Astrid, show no inclination to yield. Amor eventually turns her back on the family, and goes off to live her own life, far away.


Right hemisphere, wrong country... French Island, 2011



Meanwhile, things get worse for Swarts. The sizeable sum that Manie built up through his various enterprises is starting to dwindle. Under Anton's management -- or rather, neglect -- the farm doesn't seem to be doing very well. And the economies they make always affect the black workers first. Some lose their homes, and become day-labourers, commuting out from the townships. Salome and her son, Lukas, carry on in the house that should be theirs and isn't, fighting a losing battle against decay and deterioration. Finally, they're threatened with eviction themselves.

Only when her two older siblings have died does Amor see to it that the promise she remembers is kept. By then, Lukas is bitter and angry -- why wouldn't he be? -- and the political climate has deteriorated to the point where land claims might strip them of ownership anyway.



As we follow the family over a period of decades, the story of South Africa forms the backdrop. The State of Emergency; unrest in the townships; Anton's unhappy experience in the army, from which he deserts; the invisibility of the black population as far as their white counterparts are concerned. Then the hope of something new; the relief that the transition didn't bring the chaos that was feared; the euphoria when the Springboks beat the All Blacks, and Mandela, wearing a rugby jersey, presented the cup. Then the violence, the deteriorating infrastructure, the small- and large-scale corruption, the drought...

The book's most tragic character must be Anton. The details are unclear, but during his army service, he killed a black woman protestor. This occurs just before his mother died, and he feels he has somehow killed her too. Anton, who you feel must be suffering from untreated post-traumatic stress disorder, seems to spiral down from there. He is someone who "can see the right action and will not perform it…. Dunno. Just always been like that." He deserts from the army, but never manages to really get his life back on track. He wants to go to university, but doesn't. He wants to write, but accomplishes little. His marriage is unhappy; and it turns out he can't have children. He increasingly turns to alcohol, and eventually ends up committing suicide.

I guess many of us, having gathered a few years, wonder quite what we've achieved. Few of us avoid the taste of failure, or escape a sense of inadequacy. You feel for Anton in that respect. But the tragedy of the land, and the promised property, is doubly heart-breaking in that light, because what was held on to with such a tight grasp was then allowed to decline and dwindle. You can't help asking: Could it have been different if things had been more equitably arranged?



And could it have been different globally? It's all very well for outsiders to sit in judgment on South Africa, but there's a notable parallel with the situation planet-wide. Globally, those of us in developed countries benefit from the injustices of the past, and do little to right the wrongs our ancestors perpetrated. Globally, many promises have been made -- certain proportions of GDP for aid; help for developing countries with the task of emissions reduction; levelling the playing-field for international trade -- and yet the past few decades are littered with excuses and backtracking. And if the developed world -- by some wave of the celestial wand -- did finally follow Amor's example, offer what was pledged, and dissociate itself from centuries of ill-gotten gains, the delay would have already produced a crippling and probably irrevocable embitterment. And remember: Amor, though essentially kind, was motivated primarily by the need to assuage her guilt, never the most all-round empowering of motivators.

So, it's heavy themes we're dealing with here. And yet -- it's funny. Partly the humour comes from the constant sliding of the point of view, as you see through the eyes of characters who are constantly second-guessing themselves. It's like the bizarre little dialogues we carry on in our heads, which -- looked at dispassionately -- are often comedic. Partly it's just Galgut's powers of observation. How many of us are not intrinsically ridiculous, after all...? So the everyday realism of some of the scenes and characters (Tannie Marina's constant offers of food, for instance, or the preposterous pretentiousness of Anton's mother-in-law, or Amor's inability to get Anton's ashes borne aloft on the breeze) is as funny as the OTT surrealism (examples here are Manie's death in a sponsored snake-sit, or the yoga teacher's funeral oration, or the homeless guy's ability to see emanations clinging to people, which he conveys so realistically that people go away genuinely thinking there's something stuck to them).

The multiple points of view only tangentially include the black characters. This is a good thing, I think. For a start, this is a book about a white community, which frankly has very little interest in the people around them. And generally, I'm distrustful of authors who think they can get inside everyone else's skin. I like the humility of limitation.



Two things worth quoting, to close.

First, James Wood really nails the novel's unique narrative style:

"Galgut is at once very close to his troubled characters and somewhat ironically distant, as if the novel were written in two time signatures, fast and slower. And, miraculously, this narrative distance does not alienate our intimacy but emerges as a different form of knowing... Galgut uses his narrator playfully, assisted by nicely wayward run-on sentences. Technically, it’s a combination of free indirect style (third-person narration pegged to a specific character) and what might be called unidentified free indirect style (third-person narration pegged to a shadowy narrator, or a vague village chorus)."



Second, Galgut, interviewed in 2021 by Nawaid Anjum, has interesting things to say about African literature, the "cultural cringe" (that misplaced sense of cultural inferiority that we first learned about in Australia and New Zealand), and the state of contemporary South Africa:

"You are pushing against the current in trying to promote writers here. Barring South Africa and Nigeria, the two countries dominating international African writing, there are almost no publishers or booksellers in large parts of Africa. It should not be the problem of the West to be publishing and promoting African voices. It should be Africa’s problem...

"Only when Britain has validated your achievement will you be taken seriously. It is embarrassing and small-minded. I hope the slew of prizes, even if they turn out to be accidental, will at least crystallize people in thinking around the idea that African writing should be taken seriously -- long before Britain decides its literary worth...

"We are now into 27 years of democracy and the gap between the rich and poor is the biggest in the world -- bigger than it has ever been. Covid has wrecked the economy, which was already in trouble. The sense of despondency in South Africa is very deep. Things could have been very different. I feel despairing and angry and just sad at the wasted opportunity, and the betrayal of the trust of millions of South Africans. They have been very patient, waiting for their lives to change."

So many people, waiting for all those promises to be fulfilled...