Discussion Questions on The Promise
- The ‘promise’ of the title is both a literal one and a figurative one about the characters’, or the
country’s, potential. Can you explore that idea? - What do you make of the narrator’s voice: the way it shifts and swoops and becomes almost like a movie camera with its alternating perspectives?
- How does the Swart family stand for what is happening more broadly in South Africa?
- Discuss the supernatural elements of the book
- Towards the end we are faced with the question, not only of whether the original promise can be kept, but whether it was a flawed promise all
along. Where do you stand?