The Promise charts the crash and burn of a white South African family, living on a farm outside Pretoria. 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.

Triomf relentlessly probes Afrikaner history and politics, revealing the bizarre and tragic effect that apartheid had on exactly the white underclass who were most supposed to benefit. It is also a seriously funny investigation of the human endeavour to make sense of life even under the most abject of circumstances.

Ben du Toit is an ordinary, decent, harmless man, unremarkable in every way - until his sense of justice is outraged by the death of a man he has known. His friend died at the hands of the police.

Dinah and her sister Lisa are growing up in 1950's South Africa, where racial laws are tightening. They are two little girls from a dissenting liberal family. Big sister Lisa is strong and sensible, while Dinah is weedy and arty. At school, the sadistic Mrs Vaughan-Jones is providing instruction in mental arithmetic and racial prejudice.