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?