Pretoria Promise - Damon Galgut in conversation with Colm Tóibín at Listowel Writers' Week 2021

Join Damon Galgut as he discusses his latest book The Promise with Colm Tóibín. The Promise speaks about pain and the broken promise on a desire to own a home. 'Simply: you must read it' - Claire Messud
Damon Galgut's latest book, The Promise, charts the crash and burn of a white South African family, living 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 the failed promise to the Black woman who has worked for them her whole life. After years of service, Salome was promised her own house, her own land... yet somehow, as each decade passes, that promise remains unfulfilled.
In this story of a diminished family, sharp and tender emotional truths hit home. Confident, deft and quietly powerful, The Promise is literary fiction at its finest.
Damon Galgut was born in Pretoria in 1963. He has been shortlisted (twice) for the Man Booker Prize, and several other awards. The Promise is his ninth book and will appear in the UK and Ireland in June 2021. (Photo Credit: Marthinus Basson)
Colm Tóibín is the author of nine novels and two collections of stories. His work has been translated into more than thirty languages. He is a contributing editor at the London Review of Books, the Irene and Sidney B. Silverman Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University, and Chancellor of Liverpool University. And, of course, we are delighted and proud that he is also President of Listowel Writers' Week. (Photo credit: Brigitte Lacombe)