Introduction

WINNER OF THE 2021 BOOKER PRIZE
A NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE

On her deathbed, Rachel Swart makes a promise to Salome, the family’s Black maid. This promise will divide the family—especially her children: Anton, the golden boy; Astrid, whose beauty is her power; and the youngest, Amor, whose life is shaped by feelings of guilt.

Reunited by four funerals over thirty years, the dwindling Swart family remains haunted by the unmet promise, just as their country is haunted by its own failures. The Promise is an epic South African drama that unfurls against the unrelenting march of history, sure to leave its readers transformed.

“Simply: you must read it.”—Claire Messud, Harper’s Magazine

“This tour-de-force unleashes a searing portrait of a damaged family and a troubled country in need of healing.”—Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

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Discussion Questions

Ideas to explore written by the Booker Prize Committee:

1. 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?
2. 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?
3. Discuss the supernatural elements of the book
4. 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?

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