The Promise

A woman traveling on a transatlantic ship has fallen overboard. Adrift at sea, she makes a promise to Saint Rita, "arbiter of the impossible," that if she survives, she will write her life story. As she drifts, she wonders what she might include in the story of her life--a repertoire of miracles, threats, & people parade tumultuously through her mind. Little by little, her imagination begins to commandeer her memories, escaping the strictures of realism.

Translated into English for the very first time, The Promise showcases Silvina Ocampo at her most feminist, idiosyncratic & subversive. Ocampo worked quietly to perfect this novella over the course of twenty-five years, nearly up until the time of her death in 1993. 

Argentine writer Silvina Ocampo’s sole novel, begun in the 1960s & still unfinished when she died in 1993. In Brian Dillon’s review of the book, translated by Suzanne Jill Levine & Jessica Powell, he notes, “Ocampo’s narrative premise is elegantly unnerving. A nameless female narrator has traveled by ocean liner from Buenos Aires to visit relatives in Cape Town, there been taken ill, & while returning home fallen into the sea, unnoticed by passengers or crew. In her mind she makes a pact with Saint Rita of Cascia, patron saint of lost causes: if she survives, she will write & publish a book before her next birthday—‘though I’ve always thought it useless to write a book.’” — 4 Columns