Damon Galgut - Az ígéret (2022)

The white settlers, though in the minority, exercise real dominion over the subjugated masses of their non-white countrymen in South Africa. The Swarts' family is also an exception, haunted by an unfulfilled promise. The three brothers are drifted apart by life after their mother's death, but they occasionally return to their estate to attend the funerals of their relatives. Decades pass, and the promise does not seem to apply equally to the citizens of South Africa.
Who listens, who raises their voice, who even remembers the promise? Anton, the deserter and failed writer, who suppresses the bitter taste of failure with alcohol? The narcissistic Astrid, who takes advantage of her beauty and opportunism to enjoy the carefree life of the elite? Or the soft-spoken, hiding Amor, who starts a new life as a nurse to free herself from the suffocating memories of her family and hometown?

Damon Galgut's sea of ​​texts, flowing over decades, shows the absurd extremes of the conscience of a country, a society that is still groaning under the legacy of apartheid, sometimes with menacing realism, sometimes with wry humor.