Discussion Guide
The Promise
By Damon Galgut
These book club questions are from the Booker Prize, for which this book was the 2021 Fiction winner. A full reading guide can be found here.
Book club questions for The Promise by Damon Galgut
Use these discussion questions to guide your next book club meeting.
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?
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Create My ClubDiscuss 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?
The Promise Book Club Questions PDF
Download a printable PDF of these discussion questions to bring to your meeting.