Hello
Gentle Reader,
After
enduring what seemed to be a marathon week from hell, I had completely forgotten
that the Booker Prize had announced who had received this year’s award. This year’s
award went to the South African writer, Damon Galgut with his novel: “The
Promise.”
“The
Promise,” has been praised as a gripping and innovative novel that charts contemporary
South African history through four different funerals over forty years. This
includes apartheid, the election of Nelson Mandela, and the post-apartheid
years, all through the troubled and unhappy family history of the Afrikaner
family: The Swarts, and their failed promise to their Black domestic employee.
The novel is structured in four acts (the four funerals) and recounts with
acute detail the history of the time as it haunts and affects the Swart family
and their domestic help Salome, who is routinely overlooked by the Swarts or
failed by them. The four acts of the novel and the tracing of contemporary South
African history has shown the moral failings, the colonial legacy, the bitter
racism, and all corrupting influence of dishonesty still prevalent within the
country.
It
would be a cheapen the novel to call it a reckoning of South African past and
present, but there can be no denying that its story and its themes are rooted
and intwined with the condition of South Africa from its colonial and apartheid
legacy to its post-colonial and post-apartheid present. There is an accounting
that unresolved racism, segregation, and oppression are still viewed and held
within the country, as viewed by the continued failures to maintain a promise by
the Swarts to Salome. Yet accountability and recognition of these failings are
perhaps the first steps to resolution and moving forward.
Congratulations
are in order to Damon Galgut for winning this years Booker Prize. It’s well
deserved.
Thank-you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
M. Mary
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
