Goretti Kyomuhendo’s new novel Promises follows two lovers, as one of them moves to the UK in search of employment, and the other stays behind in Uganda to pursue her career. Promises shares common themes—like love, migration, professional fulfillment, and family secrets—with these classic books. So, if liked them, you’ll love Promises!

Like Chinua Achebe’s No Longer at Ease, Promises asks what happens when the lines between right and wrong are blurred by impossible circumstances. Both novels follow a young African man’s journey to the UK, who struggles to reconcile conflicting expectations between tradition and modernity, and between professional fulfillment, love, and family obligations.

Like Chimamanda Adichie’s Americanah, Promises is all about the search for a better life elsewhere, and what happens in-between as we chase our dreams. Both novels trace how professionally successful young women balance their careers with an unrelenting faith in love, even as migration separates them from their first big love.

Like Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀’s Stay with Me, Promises tells a love story from the dual perspectives of two lovers, giving us the chance to sympathize deeply with two sides of the same story—even in morally ambiguous areas. Both novels ask whether love is enough, especially when a country’s political upheavals, and the protagonists’ own desires and secrets, throw them off the expected course towards happily ever after.

Like Imbolo Mbue’s Behold the Dreamers, Promises exposes the dark underbelly of migration, showing the vast gap between the expectations and the everyday of African migrants to the global North. Both novels thematize the fictions that migrants find themselves caught up in and the heavy weight of their obligations, yet also their resourcefulness in making livingness in unexpected circumstances.

Like Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi’s Let’s Tell This Story Properly, Promises gives a beautifully detailed picture of a Ugandan community in the UK, through a cast of intwined characters whose lives remain embedded in Uganda. Both novels, like Helon Habila’s Travelers, foreground how complex community networks mitigate the cultural clash between Africa and Europe.

Like in Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Admiring Silence, the migrant protagonists in Promises embellish their life stories to fit the expectations of their double communities: those they have left behind, and their new people in the UK. Both novels ask where the line between fiction and lies is drawn, especially when these embellished stories are collective held, and fueled by love.

Like Goretti Kyomuhendo’s own Whispers for Vera, Promises revels in family secrets, both large and small, and asks how these secrets impact the three big elements of self-fulfillment: love, community, and work. Both novels interrogate the tensions between romantic love and career, especially for successful women, and highlight the importance of friendships in bridging the two.