Not specifically, although little anecdotes are jumbled up in there, and there’s a Jewish side to my family, an Afrikaner Calvinist side. It was very much the nerve centre of the whole apartheid machine and it had a correspondingly conservative Christian mindset, along with a kind of underlying violence that was very memorable.Īre the Swarts, the family in The Promise, based on your own ? Pretoria in the 1960s, 70s and 80s was not a great place for anyone to grow up in, even by South African standards. It was a way to exorcise some of my upbringing. The promise itself also arrived from a friend, who was telling me how his mother had asked the family to give a certain piece of land to the black woman who had looked after her through her last illness, as it happens in the book. It occurred to me that would be quite an interesting way to tell the story of one particular family. The specific form of this book crystallised around a series of anecdotes that a friend told me when we had a semi-drunken lunch, about four family funerals he’d attended. He lives in Cape Town.īooks tend to build up out of clusters of ideas or themes that you carry around for a while and worry at.
The novel is heavily tipped to land him a place on this year’s shortlist when it’s announced on 14 September. His latest, The Promise, spans four tumultuous decades as it traces the afterlife of a white matriarch’s dying wish to bequeath property to her black servant. He wrote his first novel aged 17 and has twice been shortlisted for the Booker prize. She confesses, but withholds the lover.N ovelist and playwright Damon Galgut, 57, grew up in Pretoria, South Africa, at the height of the apartheid era. She "has been having an affair with Jake's partner, the politician" (160).
Astrid seems annoyed that it does not make Amor envious.Īfterwards, Astrid goes to confession. Mbeki looked at her in a way that felt like "a kind of electric jolt" (158). She and her second husband, Jake, attended. This has not bothered Amor until now.Īmor and Astrid finally talk. The apartment and everything in it belongs to Susan. Though there is "great softness" between them, Amor and Susan’s relationship has reached a plateau (156). During dinner with Susan later, Amor ignores another call from Astrid. She ignores the message and performs her evening ritual to "forget herself for a while" (155). In "Astrid," when Astrid gets back from her shift, she has a voicemail from Astrid.
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