His white children are entitled to remind him of it. If a white man promises something to his white wife, for example, Things depending on whom and what it refers to. Property, the meaning of certain words simply vanishes.įor example, the word promise seems to mean totally different

This does not appear to be remarkable, in the world of The Promise, because on the Swarts’ In Afrikaans, swart means “black.” “The Blacks,” however, are Reality, eventually finding a nasty kind of hilarity in an era of history whose traumatic Minds, Galgut punctures their sense of their own importance with sharp doses of Keeping the narrative voice loose and roving, flitting among the Swarts’ Piece of land and the acrimonious, drawn-out disputes over its ownership, and Over a subjugated majority of nonwhite compatriots. Swarts experienced the historically freakish circumstance of true minority rule Misapprehensions, and subtly layered thefts, The Promise thrums with the nonsensical aspect of apartheid, when white families like the With this combination of abrupt acts of God, childish Other local people say that this patch of earth was theirs in the first place. Rightful claim on some of the Swarts’ land, but she is not the only one, for Of the South African constitution that demands that property settled byĮuropeans be returned, in essence, to the heirs of those from whom it was To resolve disputes over the outcome of initiatives aiming to fulfill the part Is always over property!” The question of ownership of the land remains anĮvergreen one in South African politics, where a new “land court” will soon try “When white people fight,” Astrid recalls her mother saying, “it

The promise booker prize