In 2018, Anton has sunk into alcoholism and deep depression due to his failed marriage, impotence, trauma over the killing of a civilian in the army, and the feeling that he has wasted his life.
Before her funeral, Amor makes a final appeal to Anton to fulfil their father's promise, but when she refuses to support his plan to sell some of the land on their farm, the matter is unresolved, and Amor returns to Durban, never to see Anton again. Secretly, Astrid has been having an affair with her husband's business partner, and after being denied penance by her priest during confession, is murdered in a hijacking. Despite Amor's appeals, the promise has not been honoured, and Astrid and Anton continue to resist her. In 2004, Anton is in a loveless marriage with his childhood sweetheart, Desirée, and heavily in debt, while Astrid is married to her second husband and Amor is working as a nurse in an HIV ward in Durban, where she lives with her long-term girlfriend. Anton moves back in to the farmhouse, and assures Amor he will follow through on the promise. Although she is now legally able to own her house, the will does not make provision for Salome, and instead makes the three co-owners of the land. In 1995, post-Apartheid, the siblings reunite at the family farm after Manie suffers a fatal snakebite, with Anton having spent 10 years living a transient lifestyle after deserting the army in 1986, Astrid now married with twins, and Amor having lived in England for several years. This promise, overheard by a young Amor, is made by Manie, but he claims no memory of having made it at the wake, and shows no intention of fulfilling it, especially as Salome cannot legally own property under the country's Apartheid laws. Before passing, she expresses her dying wish to Manie that their black domestic servant, Salome, be given ownership of the house in which she resides on the family's property. In 1986, Rachel dies after a long illness. The family consists of Manie, his wife Rachel, and their children Anton, Astrid, and Amor. It concerns the Afrikaner Swart family and their farm located outside Pretoria. The Promise is a family saga spanning four decades, each of which features a death in the family. The novel was awarded the 2021 Booker Prize, making Galgut the third South African to win the Prize. It was published by Europa Editions in the US and by Chatto & Windus in the UK. The Promise is a 2021 novel by South African novelist Damon Galgut, published in May 2021, by Umuzi, an imprint of Penguin Random House South Africa.
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