Damon Galgut and Chris Power on The Promise

5x15 welcomes 2021 Booker Prize-winning author Damon Galgut for a very special online event to celebrate the paperback launch of his sensational novel The Promise.

A modern family saga that could only have come from South Africa, The Promise is a powerful story of a family in crisis. The judges of the Booker Prize heralded it as 'a strong, unambiguous commentary on the history of South Africa and of humanity itself' and 'a spectacular demonstration of how the novel can make us see and think afresh', likening Galgut’s writing to the work of William Faulkner and Virginia Woolf.

The Promise is an epic drama that unfurls against the unrelenting march of national history. 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 their treatment of the Black woman who has worked for them her whole life. Salome was to be given her own house, her own land… yet somehow, that vow is carefully ignored. As each decade passes, and the family assemble again, one question hovers over them. Can you ever escape the repercussions of a broken promise?

Reunited by four funerals over three decades, the dwindling family reflects the atmosphere of its country—an atmosphere of resentment, renewal, and, ultimately, hope.

Damon Galgut is the author of nine novels. He won the Booker Prize 2021 for The Promise, having been shortlisted for the prize twice before (The Good Doctor and In A Strange Room). He lives and works in Cape Town.

Chris Power's fiction has appeared in Granta, The Stinging Fly, The Dublin Review, and The White Review, and been broadcast on BBC Radio 4. He writes for various newspapers and magazines and can sometimes be heard presenting Radio 4’s Open Book.

5x15 brings together outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations.

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