The Promise

A modest property on the outskirts of Pretoria, an unhappy white family whose dysfunctions seem likely to be remembered by no one outside their tiny circle: these might seem unpromising materials for a national epic, but Galgut weaves them into the last four decades of South African history—from Botha to Mandela to Mbeki to Zuma and beyond—in a way that makes you feel the press (the oppression) of national destiny. With a narrative consciousness that flows easily and often wittily from mind to mind through dozens of characters—nearly all of them stunted and miserable in their own ways—his story arrives at a similar conclusion to Coetzee's Disgrace: the only legitimate response for white South Africans to the legacy of apartheid is a kind of monkish self-abnegation. Enjoyable? I can't say that it is. Bracing? Certainly.